Hediard, Pain au Chocolat

Went for a second pastry from Hediard at Isetan and chose the Pain au Chocolat. Then I went running, intending to do the loop through Gaien, now that the pedestrian bridges connecting it to Minami-Aoyama and Minami-Aoyama to Kita-Aoyama are renovated. The bridges are fine, but it turns out that the north end of the planned loop through Gaien is under construction on the north end, across from the new National Stadium (but they were only ripping up the other side of the road). At least I could do the longer sections of the Jinguumae east loop, the Kita-Aoyama central loop, and the Minami-Aoyama north loop, though the latter has a new access to the main road on the east end, so I used that. Also, I just noticed that Chocolat Chic is no more, though they seemed to be just average as far as meeting my tastes, so I won't really miss them and there doesn't seem to be a compelling reason to change the neighbor route by them yet. Shrines and temples are more dependable about sticking around.

The pastry was excellent. The chocolate is just what you see on the outside, though it is enough. It's an interesting design choice. Not sure why the picture is blurry, though the lens gets a lot of abuse.

Sunday: Chocolat Chic

No posts for a week because I caught a cold. I blame stress, but not from running (actually, caught it after a rest day). Thought yesterday (Monday) that today would be the day for running, but my nose is not quite there. Maybe tomorrow. Anyway, I'm updating from the weekend, now that I'm a little free.

Sunday, we got a couple pieces of cake at Isetan from Chocolat Chic, who were visiting. Only recently have I been going back to the "Good" shops that I haven't actually blogged about (or visited in more than year) to see what they are really like, at least the ones that make it easy by visiting Isetan. This was one where my complaint was, from visiting in summer, that they didn't actually have any chocolate cakes and the cakes I had gotten I thought were not special. Today's cakes were Sicily and Les Saveurs de Chocolat, for 562 each.

The Sicily is pistachio and raspberry, as a Sicily usually is. In this case, it is pistachio cream. This cake also has hazelnuts. I don't know which nut is the layer of chopped nuts that gives it some crunch, but it is excellent cake. Raspberry jam is an accept. The biscuit part is very dry, which is my preference over spongy.

Les Saveurs de Chocolat means "flavors of chocolate", and it's layers of white, milk, and bitter chocolate. Where Au Bon Vieux Temps' three-layer chocolate mousse is ice cream intense, this is subtle. And it is also excellent and gets my respect.

Also getting my respect is a website that is up to date on the fresh cakes. I'm going to have to make this place "worthy", and I'm close to being ready to make that more quantitative, although even my postings so far have not been that precise about the cakes, which is not surprising because even for a personal evaluation, drawing the line between excellent and great is difficult, much less between good and okay or sometimes okay and bad. I guess "great" is what I'm really please with, excellent I'd like to have again, good I wouldn't go out of my way for, okay I would work to avoid, and bad is obvious.