Y par Potager, Komatsuna and Moringa Cheesecake

Working through the 2-cake quite fine shop list, I got to the last of the non-workday ones, Y par Potager (at the Nakameguro location, formerly Potager, though now in a new looking school). It's hot to run during the day, so I went by bicycle, which also allowed me to check a couple sites on the way to looking in on BE and DA to check lineups for great cakes (without any luck).

Since it was recommend out front, I went with the Komatsuna and Moringa Cheesecake at Y par Potager. Komatsuna is Japanese mustard spinach and moringa is a "superfood", though it's a tree, so I'm not sure what part they used, the leaves or the pods. It's not really suitable for Japan, since it prefers try soil. The cheesecake tasted like good cheese cake flavored with greens. Nothing wrong with that, but not something I particular need to look for, as I prefer sweets. The label shown indicates under 5 g carbs. So this shop gets banish to the fine list, probably never to be visited again. Three more 2-cake shops from the quite fine list to go.

In the late afternoon/evening, I went down to the area south of Roppongi Hills stretching down past Hiroo Station. For the main target, the Nishi-Azabu--Minami-Azabu loop, I failed again at the same second traffic signal bypass (although that bypass also serves to pass the entrance of Amida-ji, which is on a narrow lane). I kept going anyway and feel a lot more confident about the rest of the loop now. On the way, I tried two loops to the east of it and was able to do both of them correctly. The only problem is, reviewing the maps, the first one left out a temple, and looking for a way to correct that loop, I also found a church I had missed, so I'm moving the section with those sites over to a different loop. At least the Moto-Azabu south loop seems stable, and I was able to do clockwise without getting sucked into a dead end. I failed the Roppongi 6 north loop clockwise (wasn't sure how far south I needed to go after where I use a crosswalk to get over a major street), but at least the Roppongi 4 loop is finished, all 243 m of it.

Potager: Garland Chrysanthemum Opera

Today I ran a good distance and actually got cake on a weekday for the first time together in more than a month.

The 0.8 km, my chronometer was not running. The next stretch was 5.6 km, which I did in a fast 32'10'', 5.74 min/km, so I'll estimate that the part I missed was only moderately paced, since although I was trying to run the same, it also amounted to my warm-up. Coming back was a slightly different route from Nakameguro Station up to Old Yamanote Road. the Routed ended up being 6.7 km and took 41'41'', which is a slow 6.22 min/km, but then I was carrying cake, tired, and going more uphill. Actually, I was very tired after running after a long day at work. Had forgotten what that was like.

The Garland Chrysanthemum Opera, for 500 yen, is what it sounds like, except that they use sweet potatoes where another cake would use cream cheese, for example. I can't say that I could really tell what chrysanthemum tastes like from it. It is a good cake, but not exciting. I like Potager, but I'd rather have richer cakes, as long as my health can support them, so I'll designate them as "Good" and focus on other shops. I make sure that I eat a lot of vegetable with my meals: today dinner was a Chinese cabage and broiled kabocha (basically, pumpkin) salad with kabocha, zucchini, and marinated (?) tofu pizza (with mozzarella cheese and Indian tomato sauce, as usual).

That said, I think I'll try making use of the known shops who come to Isetan that I have not blogged about. They are all places that I have not been to for a year and don't really remember much about them, so there might be some excellent one's among them that I don't know about. For those who don't come to me, I can wait until I get 9 items from the great shops and 3 items from the worthy shops before I worry about getting at least one cake posted from each good shop.

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.

.