En Vedette, Chou Nougat

From now I guess the last Sunday of the previous month, the other shop I visited was En Vedette. Well, I also visited Éclat des Jours to return some glasses and get a croissant, but I've already forgotten how the croissant was, so I'll just have to get a different pastry from there. The cake of En Vedette, though was more like a pastry than cake, though with extra touches tipping back toward cake: Chou Nougat, where I'm not sure what's in the nougat, but there are some almond slices in there. The cream is crème diplomate, which I need to look up. In the middle there, protecting the bottom from the cream, is a macaron. It's a weird chou cream, but I've decided it's unique design deserves at least a semi-excellent rating. It's small, actually, but only half the price of a normal cake. 
 

En Vedette, Meringue Chantilly

In the evening of Saturday, I went out to do a neighborhood run for the Nezu Fine Arts Museum clump, which comprises the just revised Minami-Aoyama--Nishi-Azabu south loop, which I did my first clockwise run of, and the tiny Nishi-Azabu 1 north loop, which requires a long run through Aoyama Cemetery, a pretty popular running a bicycling route with a slope. With dinner I actually had a third cake (no holidays this week and I have a lot of priority shops, so I'm working), but I forgot to take a picture. It was Meringue Chantilly, and it looked like the last one I had, except there were some tiny blue/black berries of some sort and the whipped cream was caramel flavored. It's a basic desert and good, but not beyond that. En Vedette needs at least one excellent cake in the next two be able to get promoted at this point, and the choices are getting slim, which is how I ended up with Meringue Chantilly this time.

En Vedette, Macaron Printemps

Only yesterday, when I was busy in the morning, I did a run out to Miyoshi (where the parks have lots of people, unlike more local parks, which have been taped off) to get a new cake from En Vedette. This time I went for a cake that was actually marked as new, Macaron Printemps, and took the last one on display. We're in the final month of strawberry season, apparently, and strawberries are the most popular fruit (apparently there are more Japanese varieties than any other country's, though China has the biggest production), so no surprise that this is full of strawberries.

Starting with the positive, I walked the cake all the way back, but first had a Pain au Chocolat, also from En Vedette. My breakfast was long before I set out, so I was pretty hungry, which might be why I found this pastry relatively light (so easy to eat), but I believe it was excellent.

Actually, I'm not so hot on this cake. I don't like my macarons too soft, even though that's a deliberate goal for some macaron desserts. The strawberries were fine (I have no idea what variety) and it's reasonable to call it good, but I would steer clear of similar cakes, given a choice. Still, they call all please me and this shop is still in line to be promoted. I'll probably get there back for a new cake.

The running was in the evening, where I finished off confirming my revisions to three of the loops at the corner of Omote-Sandou.

En Vedette, Fromage Blanche

Saturday's other cake (cutting down on trips) was Fromage Blanche (I know, but that's the logical interpretation of the phonetic Japanese; if only there was some Chou pastry, it could be Fromage Blanc Chou). White cheese is pretty tasteless, so I wasn't sure what to expect, but the raspberry was just the right amount, and cheese mousse has a great texture, so I'm much more confident calling this excellent than the previous cheese cake I reported. Also, it didn't suffer from the travel by bicycle as much as other cakes last Saturday.

En Vedette: Tarte Fraise

At the same time I was securing a cake for a cake-off, after running to the main shop in Miyoshi, I got one new cake, since this shop is challenging to rise to a quite exceptional position. This time, I went with a cake quite similar to last time, in that it is pistachio and strawberry, but this time it's Tarte Fraise, where the base is a pistachio tart, and of course the cream above is pistachio. Usually strawberry tarts are custard tarts, but I appreciate this much better and can say it was excellent.

En Vedette, Saint-Honoré Rouge Pistache

As the noon run on Saturday, I went out to En Vedette in Koutou-ku (which Shibuya Scramble Square is shut down), looking around and taking photos of sites on future neighborhood running course loops in the areas northeast from Yotsuya Station. I took the longer route rather than go past the main Mitsukoshi in Nihonbashi, though that is shut down as well. I came back by train, which had about three people per car, so I felt relatively safe. Also, I'm now running wearing a mask, since someone ahead of me might have coughed, though I also avoid trailing in people's wake.

As a new cake, I got the Saint-Honoré Rouge Pistache, which combines a lot of things I like. Red fruit, not so much, but a little fruit goes with choux pastry better than heavy things like chocolate, as well as being a much better accent for pistachio. In this case, the cream puffs are filled with fruit sauce rather than pistachio, which I might not have chosen, but the balance was fine. The pistachio cream was more whipped cream than the thicker paste I was expecting, but again, that might be for the best, this was excellent. This shop continues to impress me and should easily reach the quite exceptional shop group, even if I'm going to have to have to get further from my preference in their line-up. Unlike Pierre Gagnaire, their residential base area lets them have a full line-up. They recognized me, of course, from my trips to Shibuya and thanked me for the visit.

En Vedette: Rin

Saturday, despite some worries that I twisted my ankle stretching (I was trying to twist it, in a sense, but not to the point of a slightly burning numbness). There was not pain running, though it felt a little funny, but at the end I was more convinced that I should take a rest. A real sprain takes weeks to heal, so I hope that level of rest is not necessary, because I'm not that patient, but I'll test it small. Anyway, no running (or cake) Sunday. For cake, I got Rin, which seemed interesting. It's obviously matcha (I think it's matcha, or at least some form of green tea) and chocolate. Note sure what else. It's fine/good, but wasn't a good follow-up for Friday's disappointment.

In fact, I'm changing my entire numerical ranking system to simplify it and hopefully make it easier to compare shops that I've had different numbers of cake from. What I really want to know is what's the chance the next cake I get from this shop is great, so in particular I wouldn't worry so much about whether that non-great cakes were actually bad, okay, or just good. JPH comes out at 48% (even after adding 5 good cakes to each shop sample to account for selection bias), whereas supposedly superb B-E comes out at  26%, which is below a few in the next lower category. After I finish catching up on past cake-off wins, I'll probably work my way down through shops that are now at the top of their categories before getting back to reviewing quite good shops, which are going to have the same problem regardless of how I rate shops, because two cakes isn't enough to distinguish which ones should be cut.

En Vedette: Range

Finally got to En Vedette, which I wanted to do both because they might be underrated at quite good and because they won a cake-off. This was my first time to go there on a weekday. Still having trouble with the route between Yamanote Line and the river to the east---the roads jig and jag---but because I was going by bicycle, I could make the 19:30 closing time after work.

I got Range (no comment on whether I would choose a cake based on my ability to remember the name), which is layers of dark chocolate, hazelnut, and apricot, I think (and I found some confirmations in Japanese in other people's posts). It was definitely good in flavor and texture, so I'm satisfied for now with my evaluation of them as a quite good shop.

It was shorter ride today, and I hadn't run since at least Friday, so I did a quick run (14+ min) to revisit more of my neighborhood courses. I've already done the ones covering Samonchou, Sugchou, Minami-Motomachi, Wakaba, Sugachou Shinanomachi, Kasumigaokamachi, and Daikyouchou, so I wanted to go up and cover Naitoumachi. It was slightly cooler today, only slightly above 30 degC when I finished running around 8 p.m.

En Vedette: Saint Marc Pistache

Finally got over to En Vedette in Miyoshi, Koto-ku. Can't say how long I ran, but about 2 hours at a low speed, so probably 9 km/h, or that at least would match the distance and estimated time. Got a little lost both ways (didn't take the same way back, as I stopped by at a few places along the way, for research). I got the Saint Marc Pistache (518 yen), which is what you would expect, except that there is a thin red layer under the chocolate cream that did not have much impact--I would guess cherry, since that's commonly paired with pistachio. It was creamy and it was definitely good, but didn't really excite me, so big plan to go back again. Nice looking little shop though, and I like the neighborhood, other than the low elevation (which is also true of Ginza), but not particularly convenient for me, which is why it's taken quite a while to get around to it.

Coming back, I went the north way around the Inner Moat course, where this time of day is mostly high school students, though they've gotten pretty ahead of me. Further up, there were a couple tourists, because of north exits for the East Gardens.