Cake-off: Jean-Paul Hévin's Tarte au Chocolat over Limevert's Pruneau,

Rainy and a little cold today, but not enough that I needed more than a windbreaker and a wide hat. Wanted to do a cake-off with Jean-Paul Hévin's Tarte au Chocolat today, since it's only available this month and I don't want to wait until the last minute (next weekend, is definitely out), but was not sure what I would be able to match it with, so I had some back-ups in mind. It's 12+ km and I kept it fairly slow, on the low end of 9 km/h, because I might end up at 30+ km if Pruneau was not available at P. Limevert. Their site is fairly detailed and it was not listed, but I could not remember whether their site is reliable. Apparently it isn't, or I'm not at reading information from it, which amounts to the same thing for me, except I could do something about the latter. I was of two minds, apparently: I was anxious approaching the shop, worry that they would not have it, and yet I felt disappointed that I was getting what I wanted (otherwise, it would have been a longer additional run to Les Cacao, with Bubo Barcelona as the next back-up). 

This is the second time that I rated a cake from Limevert great when I had it in the shop but could not finding anything special about it at home. As always, I'm not sure whether it is the change in my condition or the change in the cake's condition (maybe I should have let it warm up more from the refrigerator). Anyway, I'm happy that Tarte au Chocolat was still great. I hope I get it match it against another chocolate tart next year (I've had other great ones, but not ones that I know are available now). If other shops disappoint me, I might be back there, and I'll eat in again. For now, though, they get demoted to Excellent and I am tentatively promoting Bien Etre and 14 Juillet Tokyo to Quite Excellent. It leaves the Excellent group a little under, but the Quite Good group is too tangled up to promote any of them yet and too unimportant (I'm after great cake). Maybe after I finish topping up the local Excellent shops, if too many crash and burn. 

Yeah, finally about to be caught up on the blog. I want to get something from the visiting shop at Isetan tomorrow, but I should skip cake a couple days, for among other reasons, to get a couple non-cake things from JPH for their two cake-off wins.

[Sat] Limevert: Noir Chocolat

Saturday was another long research ride. I tried the technique of asking, which rarely works (Hidemi and Viron it did, but those are pretty high-end with long histories, so I'm not surprised that the staff has some knowledge of the schedule, unlike part-time staff at less famous places). Also, I spent a lot of time lost from not trying to follow a particular path; too many rivers make too few straight roads, so on a cloudy day, it's easy to get turned around. More than once I had to reverse course once I realized where I was, but at least I never completed loop myself. Need to find out about mounting a smartphone with a map app to my bicycle.

At Limevert, I got the Noir Chocolat, which is dark chocolate with some nuts over chocolate mousse with probably Bavarian cream flavored by earl grey. It was well composed and so should perhaps have been excellent, but perhaps because I have a lot of chocolate, I couldn't say that this was interesting enough that I would want to make it even if I could, which is my working definition of excellent cake (not that I've done any baking at all lately, which is a problem, because I have two eggs at the limit of their usability, perhaps: 3 months past "expiration"). Although not pretty, I'm including a half eaten version so that the inside is visible. I'll without hold that from Twitter version and would certainly not post that to Instagram (which I've yet to post to, since I don't have a smartphone, but see the above related remark to guess my future shopping plans).

As almost the last shop (I stopped at the Ginza Mitsukoshi on the way back), I also got a pasty from Éclat des Jours for the first time, a Kouign Amann. This was usual, in that what would usually be a single solid crystal of caramelize sugar was instead left almost completed granular, melted only just enough to make it stick together. I'm not convinced that its a better idea, but its was interesting to try. Also, this seemed like the saltiest puff pastry I've ever had, though not to a point of being a problem.

Limevert: Fromage Citron

I planned cycling today when I was thinking that I would run longer on Saturday and would need the rest in order to run again on Monday, which is still somewhat true. It certainly will keep me from being worried about the weekday runs and I'm going to try again to do a 40+ km run next weekend, so it doesn't hurt to keep things lighter this weekend. Still, I planned longer (30+ km), and got more lost, making it even long, because I was cycling.

First I went up to Aigre-Douce again, just because I missed seeing or at least remembering their cake that was planned as the primary in the next cake-off (I found it this time). Then I continued along Mejiro Avenue to Yamanote Avenue and turned off onto Honan Avenue, which was correct, but

turned too early from there, though at least was going south. I eventually got to Limevert, where I got the Fromage Citron (540 yen), chosen somewhat arbitrarily from things I haven't had, but it was definitely excellent. It's cheesecake, of course, with rare cheesecake on top (mousse) accented with lemon and a thin solid layer of baked cheesecake on the bottom with another layer of citrus (the card only mentioned lemon, but the color was different here and not as sour, but it could have been lemon too). Note sure whether the fruit helped or hurt it, but I'd be curious to have it without.

Limevert: Pruneau

For my long run of the week, I went over to Limevert again, taking a longer path of going south to the middle of Aoyama Cemetary before heading west to Roppongi Ave and then over to my usual route down to Old Oyamate Ave. (though I took the southern branch for some reason) and then down to follow Meguro River northwest and then the green path to Umegaoka, and from there along the train line.

I ate in again (obviously) and got chocolate again, this time Pruneau (580 yen) according to the French, but the Japanese name seems to be phonetic for "Brick" (though wrote down "Buritta": hard to write those cards). This is a couple solid chocolate sticks on top, then cocoa powder, chocolate mousse, chocolate cream, a little unlisted chocolate sponge (probably for cohesion), chocolate ganache, and finally a feuillantine base for crunch. I'm not completely confident, but I'm going to say it was great and look forward to testing that in the future.

From there, I went back a different route so I could stop by at Fraoula because I had overlooked that theirs was the first cake I rated here as great, so I should have started with them (I was greedy back then and had two great cakes on that day). Unfortunately, though they were happy to see me again, it seems to be something that they make on an irregular schedule. They offered to give me a call when they made it next, but my schedule is a little more complicated than that and I don't mind stopping in occasionally. I bought there Croissant d'Almonde, which was great. It is the soft kind, maybe with almond syrup, but the powered sugar definitely was part of the appeal for me. More than for cakes, this is a quite excellent place for the few pastry they make, so I need to get there more often just for that, though I'm not sure whether I've missed anything at this point.

Limevert: Chiboust Chocolat

Today, I went to an under-visited potentially (because I've still only sampled a few cakes) quite excellent shop, Limevert, which is along the Odakyu Odawara Line, Soshigayaohkura Station, in Soshigaya, Setagaya-ku. To avoid Shibuya, I went by way of the road west from Yoyogi Station. It's about 13 km each way, which I did averaging 10 km/h, though faster out than back. They have a relatively big (several tables) café space set up, so I ate in, as you can tell from the photo.

The cake is Chiboust Chocolat (540 yen), which is a disk of chocolate chiboust on a raspberry custard tart (no nuts, the little nuggets are crust) and excellent, so I suppose I'll be back there again next weekend, conditions permitting. Think I'll try the slightly more direct rough through Harajuku, though, more for variation than dissatisfaction with today's route.

Au Bon Vieux Temps, Zephyr

Cycled to Au Bon Vieux Temps for cake again. This time I got Zephyr, which was 702 yen. The top is chocolate cream with alcohol, which both seem to be a specialties of theirs. The bottom is a steamed/baked mascarpone cheese and brown sugar (had to look up "vergeoise" from the Japanese phonetic French) cheesecake, which was almost nutty in texture. This cake is excellent, so I chose well again. That chocolate stick should be on top, though.

Being greedy, I continued on to Limevert, because I hadn't forgotten that they had a bostock (for 380 yen), but it wasn't really the type I like. I like double-baked, somewhat thick, but this was thin and rum-soaked with lots of sliced almonds (a large amount of almonds slid off even before I got it; it's not very stable ). It was still good.

Didn't do a good job of staying on the best path, so it ended up being 34 km of cycling, which is a couple more than I planned. My leg seems okay, but now my arm isn't too happy, so I may need to limit that.

I should mention sometime that I've had the Venezuelan Noir chocolate from Henri le Roux (I've given up on photographing them), and it was excellent, like their other chocolates. Now I want to get to Tokyo midtown to try the their new Kouign Amann flavor, lime.

Walking to Limevert: Mer

Had a half day off today, so walked to Limevert patisserie café, which took about 13 km at I guess 5 km/h (had trouble with starting and stopping chronometer correctly), sometimes in heavy rain (tｙphoon pasｓing through tonight). Happy keeping it slow, as I want to work on my distance before trying again to regain some speed. Managed to follow the correct route in the middle for once going to this area.

The end is easy, because I'm following the elevated train line for several stations. Never can remember the station name (Soshigaya-ohkura), but recognize Ultraman (not sure what the connection is, and there's at least one more in Yokohama).

Shop does not really stand out and is narrow, but they have the usual stuff and pastries. Already ordered the canelé (230 yen) for the road before noticing the bostock (which would have been hard to eat neatly walking down the street), but it was good (it was a well-baked one, which I like over soft ones).

The Mer (550 yen) is various things: earl grey flavo(u)red milk chocolate, apricot gelatin, and caramel walnuts. It was definitely excellent and I'm going to call it great because I haven't had one this before and I'd like to have it again. For good or bad, the flavor makes me think of pie. For one thing, it's not very firm, but it took a while to bring it back. Not sure what the connection to the "Sea" is.

Almost forgot, tried a couple more caramels from Henri le Roux yesterday: Citron Vert (lime) and Diable Rose (banana, raspberry, and passion fruit). Very good candy and it's interesting to taste very good candy, but I prefer the chocolates.

27 km to Limevert

Well, I complained that my route was not as long as I wanted and spaced when it came time to turn to follow the main river and took the north branch instead, so it became long enough. I thought it looked familiar. Guess I'll have to try again. Following #8 Ring Road south was not that great, so I think next time I'll consider a more navigationally complex route, despite having proved where that gets me. And I only was okay because the branch still arrived at #8 Ring Road, just there was no station there, so I knew something was off. Time was about 2 h 45 min, which is a little surprising because I thought I was barely doing 7 min/km at the 10 km mark, where I had only gotten a little lost and had to make a one major detour. I'm pretty sure Google isn't over-measuring, because it is not taking account of all the detours (which I remembered from before: they aren't finishing that construction through the park along that river very quickly) and it isn't great at following river paths anyway for the find route function (since at the end I want to tell it a route, not the other way around). Now I'm going to have to find somewhere I want to go that uses the original river. On the plus side, I should really follow it all the way to Kichijoji Station rather than bail at #8 Ring Road. Pretty well demonstrated that I could exhaust myself on a long run without doing 45 km.

On the cake side, the good news is that Limevert is actually a patisserie with a cafe rather than the reverse. They just opened this year, so not much record on the web on them and their website does not show the cakes I chose and I didn't take notes or photos there, so I'm going to have to guess somewhat on the names (and change them to the Latin alphabet). I'll call the chocolate cake Raryu (which is what I remember) and the other Chiboust Caramel, although the name of the latter had another word.

The Raryu is a basic but good chocolate cake, steam-baked, if I understand correctly, with ganache between cake layers. Very dense chocolate and good, although I don't really need that much plain chocolate cake, so half would have been fine. The Chiboust Caramel is caramel Chiboust above a custard (I think; I was exhausted and had a nap now) tart and leaky (in the box and on the plate, as you can maybe see). Also very good. I definitely recommend visiting them if you're in the area and how they'll be successful.