Rue de Passy, Chocolat Pistache

When they didn't have the great cake I wanted for a cake-off two Saturday's back, not to waste the trip at a time with fewer opportunities to get cake, I choose the Chocolat Pistache, on the reasoning that the other best cake I've had from there was this combination. This was a more traditional cake, though, and was maybe cream rather than ganache, so I should have eaten it at a warmer temperature. Actually, this combination is tricky, as while pistachio can accent chocolate, the latter has a strong taste that doesn't benefit from being diluted or give way to other flavors easily, so I didn't really feel like this harmonized the best, though it was still good.

Happily, I did much better on Sunday for a cake-off, which I failed to photograph, apparently. The cake-off was a third round between two cakes from the double-loser's bracket, between Pistache Chocolat from Coffee Parlor Hilltop and Concert from Lenôtre. I learned from Saturday's mistake and let the Pistache Chocolat sit out for 5 minutes from the refrigerator. It was definitely great and the light pistachio and chocolate taste was harmonizing well, though it still lost to the chocolate simplicity of Concert.

While I was at Ginza Mitsukoshi, visited Johan and got a pastry (which used to be my favor pastry source when they were in Shinjuku). Ig to the Kouign Amann. This seems to be the traditional shape, which is not my favorite, but I felt that I was recognizing it's good points finally, as this was excellent.

P. la Glycine: Concert (2nd cake)

Somehow managed to get away in time to do a run to P. la Glycine. Since I've been running somewhat hard for a couple days and I only need a few kilometers to match last week, I deliberately tried to go slow, although not to the point of timing myself (although I did check at 1.5 km, which came in over 9'30'', which seemed about right. Total, my path down to Aoyama, Avenue, through Omotesando to Aoyama Gakuen University, down to Meguro River, and following it to the shop, took 41'35''09, covering 6.49 km, which is exactly my slow pace.
Coming back, I took 46'00''04 to cover 6.79 (including a pedestrian overpass), which is very slow.

The cake was Concert (or maybe Kontsert: it was only written in katakana) for 570 yen. This is "new" and chocolate. Similar to yesterday's, the top was mousse and the bottom was not, but this time the bottom was a dry/crunchy but somewhat loose biscuit with almond pieces in it rather than being poundcake-like. They boast using 80% cacao chocolate, so it's dark. It was very good and I appreciate the effort to make a different kind of chocolate cake than I've had before, so I'm keeping this shop as worthy (versus just good).

I think that leaves six worthy places with fewer than 2 cakes posted on, four at Isetan (although one is just a bakery, which I'll probably visit tomorrow), and two are distant, so I probably won't be getting to either soon, although maybe the closer one next weekend.