Rue de Passy, Figue Fromage

Avoiding the one-cake surcharge, I had gotten two cakes from Rue de Passy (the second from the previous cake-off win): Figue Fromage. It's as named. Can't remember what type of cheese, though not one of the strong ones, so fig dominated. It was definitely good and was a nice change from other cakes earlier in the day. 

En Vedette, Saint-Honoré Rouge Pistache

As the noon run on Saturday, I went out to En Vedette in Koutou-ku (which Shibuya Scramble Square is shut down), looking around and taking photos of sites on future neighborhood running course loops in the areas northeast from Yotsuya Station. I took the longer route rather than go past the main Mitsukoshi in Nihonbashi, though that is shut down as well. I came back by train, which had about three people per car, so I felt relatively safe. Also, I'm now running wearing a mask, since someone ahead of me might have coughed, though I also avoid trailing in people's wake.

As a new cake, I got the Saint-Honoré Rouge Pistache, which combines a lot of things I like. Red fruit, not so much, but a little fruit goes with choux pastry better than heavy things like chocolate, as well as being a much better accent for pistachio. In this case, the cream puffs are filled with fruit sauce rather than pistachio, which I might not have chosen, but the balance was fine. The pistachio cream was more whipped cream than the thicker paste I was expecting, but again, that might be for the best, this was excellent. This shop continues to impress me and should easily reach the quite exceptional shop group, even if I'm going to have to have to get further from my preference in their line-up. Unlike Pierre Gagnaire, their residential base area lets them have a full line-up. They recognized me, of course, from my trips to Shibuya and thanked me for the visit.

Pierre Gagnaire, La Fraise

Get up early due to not getting back to sleep and wet off to do the National Art Center clump of my neighborhood running course, which stretches from Aoyama 1 Stn. to the east and west most exits of Roppongi Stn. From the last, I made a side trip to Pierre Gagnaire, so it was a gentler trip home, which I reached a little before 09:00. I was success at the clump, which is 5.452 km by itself. I still have to do the farthest (but smallest) loops clockwise again.

After a carrot (as something to hold down a spike in blood sugar), I had La Fraise, which is a shape cake. This is obviously a solid shell. Inside is mostly very light strawberry mousse, with a little bit of custard and strawberry (I'm not sure whether the custard is needed to project the mousse from the strawberry). The "leaf" is pretty gummy, so probably best to eat it separately, unless you like that kind of thing. It was very nice, if light and a little hard to each, since the shell breaks apart (I assume it's white chocolate based). Still, a definitely good cake. 

En Vedette, Fragola

Monday or Tuesday (can't remember which), I took advantage of the fact that, during the week, the food floors kept their regular hours, so I could go after work for another new cake from En Vedette, which is heading for promotion. I've run through most of their line-up, so I went for the shape cake this time, Fragola (which is Italian for strawberry). The outside is white chocolate and the inside is lemon cream and strawberry jelly. The cake provides some texture variation, but I think it needs something more on that front. It's good, but weak for me, maybe because I'm not a big strawberry fan.

En Vedette, Mont-blanc

Monday of last week, I had lunch at Isetan and could make buy cake in the middle of the day on a workday (and in fact would be the only such cake during the week). En Vedette was visiting, so I took advantage of the opportunity to buy their Mont-blanc. This is the usual whipped cream under chestnut paste arranged horizontally between two meringue disks, which makes for a high meringue to cream and chestnut, and a rather sweet cake, which suits me, especially for something that get verge on bitter like chestnut. In fact, I want to have it again, which is another way of saying that it was great. This puts En Vedette on a path to challenge the category above, quite exceptional shops, though this third great cake probably isn't going to be enough to take it all the way, even if it stands up under testing.

Lenôtre: Carré Fraise

For Monday, I went from the priority shop I missed last week, down to getting Christmas cakes from JPH, though from the same department store: Lenôtre at Ginza Mitsukoshi. They were sold out of most things, which is good: they are catching on enough that they should be able to continue. They had lots of Carré Fraise, a new cake among the red fruit cakes introduced for Christmas. Like the Carré Orange, this was a dense traditional (think eastern Europe) cake with just ganache as the decadent part, only fruit instead of chocolate or just butter and nuts, which works well, especially as something different. I can say that this is excellent, so Lenôtre stays far above the pack of exceptional shops, ready to be promoted with Origines Cacao closes and three levels of shops get to promote their top shop. I was a little lazy, as I only ran there and mostly walked back, though I did do the indoor weights workout, I think (if I'm remembering correctly the sequence).

Michalak: Framboise-Rose

Got a tenth cake from Michalak, which at least catches them up to the other exceptional cake shops (six plus 4 for cake-off wins). The latest "cake" is more tart, though I guess the French term for this baked good is "clafoutis", though that wasn't used in Japan where they prefixed it with "Unik" I think (which I'm ignoring) but still called it "Framboise-Rose", even though there was no rose petal on it, unlike the version two years ago in France. Still, the raspberry on top makes it fresh cake. It was definitely good, but I'm still waiting for the next great cake from them after two early finds.

The running was relatively short after yesterday's long run: just out to the revised Jinguumae 5&6 loop to do it clockwise and back, which only took about 45 minutes. That and the indoor basic 15 minute workout (since I did squats for warm-up before the run) was enough, since I worked late and ran errands before starting, so supper (and cake) was pretty late.