Sadaharu Aoki, Forêt Rouge

Tuesday, I got cake first from Sadaharu Aoki at Isetan, managing to get the last piece of Forêt Rouge, unlike the previous day in Marunouchi, though that was much earlier in the day. Having straightened out the Akasaka loop on the neighborhood running course, I went by bicycle to Tokyo Midtown to park for free next to the loop. Before running, I found out that Toshi Yoroizuka is now open on Tuesdays, as of this month, when I went to double check their summer holiday, which is next Tuesday to the following Sunday. I successfully completed the planned course and did not have any corrections to make (at that time). I also completed the counterclockwise from-memory runs of the Akasaka 9 east and west loops, so that takes cake of the dead-end loops in the Akasaka clump. This time I was up to 1:8 walking to running, but the distance did not give me 10 full cycles, so I'll be holding that for a while, and may need to do specific interval training run next week if I don't try a longer route.

The cake was excellent quality and liquor (kirsch syrup)-soaked cherries in cherry suwent well with the cream and almond biscuit, so I'll rate this one was excellent.

Blondir, Bourgeonner

Monday, I worked late, so I did some neighborhood course confirmation near Tokyo Midtown and stopped for a croissant from Sadaharu Aoki, since they don't have any fresh cake that I haven't had. It was excellent. It says that it was imported from France, but I expect in the form of butter and flour, not already baked, though they could import frozen dough. I completed confirming the Minami-Aoyama east loop and the Roppongi 7 west loop and did the Roppongi 7 east clockwise (all in the National Art Center clump of three loops).

Tuesday, I ran down to the Sadaharu Aoki at Shibuya Hikarie ShinQs and got their exclusive Tokyo-yaki Macaron Chocolat, which is a traditional Japanese cake made from batter and a mold with a macaron inside instead of bean paste. Also, the cake part was mochi-like (chewy) and green tea flavor. I microwaved it for 20 seconds as recommended, and it pretty much recreated the traditional texture despite having a macaron for filling. I'll never do that again. I'll call it good because it was as designed, but if I try another flavor, I'll have it cold, though I don't expect it would be better. Hopefully I'll find better things elsewhere. For the running, I did a one-way neighborhood course run to formally add the newly designed Shibuya east loop and well as confirm my knowledge of it, which completes the Shibuya Station Southeast clump of two loops.

Wednesday, I got cake at Isetan from Blondir, as a third cake from a seemingly quite good shop. This is supposedly pistachio ganache with strawberry soaked in red wine, but then there is Kirsch in there somewhere, maybe in the raisins on top, as they were definitely soaked in something. The feeling was more like a rum raisin cake, but then pistachio is the fruity nut. It was interesting and I approval of the design. Definitely wouldn't mind having it again, so excellent: Blondir will make the cut. Now on to the "C" quite good shops. Running was to Ginza, touring from Mitsukoshi and then (walking underground) to Viron and to 14 Juillet, none of which had anything unexpected.

Il Pleut sur la Seine: Polonaise

Finally got to Il Pleut sur la Seine again after upgrading it to the superb cake shop list to replace Abricotier. Today's cake brings me up to 5 cakes reviewed for here (so still 2 more to catch up). It was a slow after yesterday's long run following a training run the day before that. So I did not make any of the lights through Omotesando (I did stretches while I waited). I'm consider altering my path going that way on slow days to try to at least line up with a pedestrian bridge crossing the street between Omotesando Station and Harajuku Station. There and back, about 5 km each, were both at exactly the same speed, close to 9 km/h.

The "cake" for today is Polonaise, which is a brioche Polonaise, so perhaps actually a pastry, but I think the meringue is enough to push it over into the cake category, at least for me, especially after allowing Fondant Choc
olat yesterday. This is a brioche (which is a sweet bread) spiked with kirsch, filled with candied fruit (so it tasted like fruit cake), with a little bit of custard at the center and a lot of meringue (more than 1 cm thick) covering it, with sliced almonds. It sounds like a mess and not something I would be into, maybe, and actually it did become messy because my eating strategy was to cut out radial wedges, which obviously imbalances it, and it tastes like a baba, which I'm not excited about, but it all works well together and it was excellent.

Viron: cherry mousse cake

Got cake from Viron, which I thought was Pompette, but maybe it was Pampette, although I get more hits from Polpette, but nothing showing cake. I guess I just have to go back to find out, since as usually, I can't find any other posts showing this cake, which is not part of the regular lineup. It has Kirsch mousse I remember, which I didn't even have to look up to know what it is from the Japanese, because I just looked it up yesterday for a cake recipe: it is a transparent, not sweet, cherry brandy. So whatever it was called, it is a cherry mousse cake with some whole fruit. This was good, certainly, although not really it was cherry cake, which is something I would normally avoid but I was willing to give this a try (and had limited options for new cake). This was good, but not really 734 yen good. And it was definitely not great that I could tell, so Viron is too hit and miss for me to keep it as a "great" shop, so I'm downgrading it to "excellent" (so I probably won't be back there again soon, except for bread).