Kyobashi Sembikiya, Fruits Savarin

Saturday, I was busy, but was offered cake, and I guess I was tired, because I accepted buying at Odakyu rather than going to Isetan, just because it was too hard to think what I wanted at Isetan (whereas I know there's nothing I want at Odakyu). Anyway, Kyobashi Sembikiya is not bad, so we got a couple things, including, I think Fruits Savarin. Note that this had no alcohol taste, just fruit, but otherwise was reasonably good. The other is a melon bavarois, which could be an ingredient of cake, but here is just cream, so I'm not keeping track of it. It was fine, and the melon was more memorable than the other fruit, at least.

Kyobashi Sembikiya; Mont-Blanc and Marron Shortcake

By request, I got two cakes from Kyobashi Sembikiya via Isetan. Actually, I was down on this shop based on non-cake items, I think, or at least I can only find a review of yogurt and fruit, which was okay. I choose Mont-Blanc and the other cake chosen was Marron Shortcake. It's a fruit shop, but these are probably the only two non-fruit cakes, though chestnuts are maybe the least nutty things called nuts, being high in starch, I think, rather than oil and protein.

The Mont-Blanc as actually good, better than I expected, though not distinctive. The Marron Shortcake was also good, even compared to other fruitcakes. Two good cakes makes this a fine shop, though about know a couple hundred of those, so no hurry to go back.

I tried running to Ginza Mitsukoshi later and would have gotten cake for a cake-off if they hadn't been sold out, but I wasn't really surprised that they were. On the way back, I did two new tiny loops clockwise, the Akasaka 3 loop and the Yotsu north loop, both added because of having St. Marc Cafe shops. Actually, there is another just north of the street-level Akasaka 3 loop, but I can't even add that as part of a loop without messing up some other part of the map, so I just have to run a link along there.

Cake-off: Viron's Gateau au Chocolat over Jean-Paul Hévin's Guayaquil

I'm a couple days behind because there were a couple days without cake.

Sunday, I did a similar run to Friday's, along the History and Culture course from the start of the Gaien Walk to Hibiya Park, with the only difference being that I took the slightly longer way (and definitely hillier way) past Akasaka going back but also stopped at Lawson 100. This was about 12 km at 9 km/h. There was not cake, but there was desert from Kyobashi Sembikiya, which is a fruit place. I just got the Fruit Yogurt, which was more than half banana and not any better than what I have every day for breakfast and four times the price (although we had a 500 yen ticket to use, so that covered 1/3 of two desserts). The other double-priced and slight better dessert was Melon Bavarois.

Monday, I tried going to Le Coeur Pur, which it turns out has moved, so 19 km averaging 9 km/h, though that is in the rain and passing through dense commuting crowd (with umbrellas) from the intersection of Meiji and Yasukuni north of Shinjuku San-chome Station through to at least West Shinjuku Station, and to a less extent at every Marunouchi Line station. As with Ginza, it's probably faster (or at least less frustrating and safer) to go underground and walk under the Shinjuku Station area, which is what I did coming back, from the Odakyu entrance (which, by the way, is the department store where we picked up yesterday's fruit desserts). Because I had no cake and spent an extra kilometer looking around outside and then more effort walking inside around Ogikubo Station the the department store), I decided to treat myself to a Mr. Donut Angel French cruller on the way back, which was good (they are lighter than American donuts, though I'm not sure about U.S. Mr. Donut in particular). Didn't mind not getting cake, since I was planning a cake-off for today anyway.

Cake-off meant getting Guayaquil from Isetan and then running to the Marunouchi Viron for Gateau au Chocolat, which I did successfully. I took the long, hillier way down to Aoyama Avenue going out and came back up the side of Akasaka coming back, though the times were not that different (at least carrying cake) despite the more than 1 km difference, and with the lights I'm not sure that the short way is much faster. It was about 12 km, with the great part at 10 km/h going and 9 km/h coming back. Both cakes are definitely great, so it was hard to choose (but fun comparing). In the end, I decided the Viron's Gateau au Chocolat deserved the win for it's greater simplicity (it's a uniform cake, whereas the Guayaquil is maybe half ganache in layers and falls apart when cut) and lower price, but this is not a single-elimination competition, so if and when I get to a second round, Guayaquil won't miss its chance against another first-round loser.