Vincennes, Délice au Cassis

Working through a list of cakes I want a third cake from, I finally got to Vincennes out in Meguro-ku, when I went to by bicycle, taking a break from running and doing my short indoor workout. I got Délice au Cassis, which is almond biscuit with some cassis butter cream (?), and some "raw" chocolate on top. It's a nice little cake from a nice little shop, for a nice price, and was good. Don't imagine that I'll need a fourth cake, but I respect them, even if I search for fancier things.

Thursday: Vincennes, Gateau Chocolat

Went to Vincennes for a second cake. This time I chose the simple Gateau Chocolat for 356 yen (a sign on the door noted that prices were going up in June). It was definitely good. It is a drier but soft cake, on the range of these types of cakes. If this were a more convenient shop, I might go back, but for now it will just be a backup (they are open until 9 pm).

The second attempt at a macaron-type cake (or at least the biscuit part) worked better this time, although still not quite stiff enough. Also, I'm going to need to center it in the pan, and possibly get a flat baking sheet to get better convention over the entire cake.

Sunday: Vincennes

Only had 13 km left in this month's running budget, which was enough to get me to Vincennes, a place I've known about for a long time and which Joshi+ finally visited, so it seemed time for me to give them a chance, despite reservations. 6.5 km of fast, which surprises me, because there was an extra slope from Meguro River to the shop. Coming back with cake, bypassing that by following the train line, was a slow 6.55 km, although there were more people and stairs involved, so maybe the hill route was the better choice.

Now I've got to figure out my weekly levels: 2.4 km very slow, 44.8 km slow, 15.2 moderate, 22.2 fast, and 0.2 very fast, which adds up to 84.8 km. Since last week's very slow was 36 km, this is a huge improvement, no matter how anything else works out. Almost no very fast+ (last week, 4 km), but fast+ of 22.4 km is still up by more than 9 km, and I had 9 km more of moderate, so about +18 km of moderate+ running. Except for at the top, huge shift upward in speed, so quite good.

The cake was Noisettine for 356 yen (not a typo). I like hazelnut cake, so this was excellent for me, so Vincennes unexpectedly becomes a high priority "worthy" shop, although I don't expect that to last (but if I consider the prices, maybe it should). Huge amount of competition around there (on my map, they are on the south edge surrounding Meguro River going past Nakameguro up to tail of Shibuya Station, east to Ebisu).

Also today, because we were in Shinbashi and I had read about this shop in Sweet Sonobe, I tried the bar at Le Chocolate de H. They have a (little) chocolate tart that is eat-in, so we got a couple drink sets for 1300 yen (the tart is 800 or 900 yen by itself, I think). It is excellent, though not really that cost effective. You have to wait 20 minutes for them to bake it, since it is hot and filled with chocolate (so great smell). Still, if you're in Ginza, have already visited Dalloyau a couple times (which is two short blocks away), and enough seats are available (only 5 total), it's probably worth having. We'd like to try their macarons some time, as would they, since they gave me both a chocolate guide and a macaron guide when I asked for their card.

Run to Potager: Ginger Chocolate Mousse

Decided to give Potager a try, finally. They're known for vegetable sweets, and besides their versions of patisserie cakes and cookies, sell soy noodles, although maybe that's related to whatever they serve as a café besides cake. It's a little over 6 km and I could get there in about 36 minutes running. I forget whether I arrived at 7:20 or 7:30, but they had both several customers and a variety of cakes left.



Potager: Ginger Chocolate Mousse

I chose the Ginger Chocolate Mousse for 470 yen, which is in a standard chocolate mousse cake form with a cream center. The ginger seemed to be actually tiny pieces of ginger, enough to crunch a little, rather than making it a mousse like the chocolate, but it was just a slight accent rather than trying to really compete with the chocolate, despite its "abundant" use. I choose a standard form of cake which actually I often have trouble with, maybe being burned out on it, but in this case it was fine. It was not a rich chocolate or a strong chocolate, but it was not watery so I could enjoy it and the ginger (and a tea flavor accent as well, supposedly). Thus, it was successful as a run and a cake source: within my range in terms of distance and operating hours and having good cake worth the trip. I'm designating it "worthy" (for lack of a better term for shops that I'm especially interested in that aren't at the "great" level of the top places). I'm starting to reorganize my map in preparation for when I'll want to visit some shops on the map that I haven't blogged about but visited in the past.

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