La Base Secrète du GAMIN: Marbré W Fromage

Still at the beginning of working through under-visited shops from my bloated quite good list. I'm skipping a couple A's for logistic reasons and ran to (La) Base Secrète du GAMIN, which seems farther than it is because of the slow down going through Shibuya station. I'd try running further north, in front of NHK Studio Park next time, but that's not looking necessary. Round trip is 14 to 15 km.

Got there several minutes before closing on the day before their rest day and the person ahead of be bought 4 pieces, so not a big selection, which is true every time I go there. This time I went with Marbré W Fromage, which is a baked cheesecake base with a marbled cheese souffle on top. Considered coming back by train, but it requires a line transfer and isn't that direct, so I was able to convince myself that there was not much benefit, plus I could use some more exercise after the heavy eating last weekend. I had a windbreaker in my backpack that I didn't get out, but I definitely was feeling that I was activating brown fat cells on the way back.

My major complaint is that this cake was put in the box with nothing to keep it in its place, so it was just rolling around in there. On the other hand, it's not delicate at all and was fine (it probably didn't roll around so much as settle in the corner and shift a little bit). It's a nice cake: nothing special but I didn't feel disappointed in it. Definitely good. When this shop category get's revised, it will probably get moved to the good group, but eventually that bloated group will get revised and it will remain in a definitely good group, I expect, though I'm a long way from needing to go through the good shops to see whether I overlooked something deserving more attention.

The plan for tomorrow is to visit the slightly nearer Ueno counter of a shop that otherwise is definitely farther (and open later, so I might end up there anyway, if I failed to find anything new in Marui Dept. Store.

Sweet Satsuki: Satsuki

Sweet Satsuki: Satsuki

Had the afternoon free, so I took a long run. First, I went down to Sweet Satsuki in Himonya, Meguro-ku, which is not so far off my usual route to Jiyugaoka and got their Satsuki (~500 yen). It's a tiny shop with only a few fresh cakes. The cake was nice enough, completely competent, if nothing particular exciting: good, but not something to set them apart. It's a little neighborhood shop in the middle of a residential neighborhood, so it's probably hard for them to be much more. That part of the run was 9 km/h for 9 km, which is not bad given that my hips hurt from the beginning due to falling over backwards Sunday. Both my hips and my neck (from trying unsuccessfully to keep me from wacking the back of my head on the asphalt) are much better for the run.

La Base Secrète du GAMIN: Croissant

I went way further south than I needed to (by more or less exactly the route that I'll need to do for maybe the next new shop, which is further south) before turning to Jiyugaoka to check for new or sought after great cakes, though they were down two from last time: I only found 1 total. I went up to Sakarushinmachi for the same reason and still did not find the one cake I'm looking for there. From there, I linked up to the green path that runs near La Base Secrète du GAMIN, where I got a Croissant for 280 yen that was excellent, even though it was the mostly bread-like kind with just a couple millimeters of pastry outside.

Due to just the way the lights were, I ending up coming back north along Yamanote for much of the run, after avoiding major roads. At least Yamanote allows a pretty good separation from the road to run, even if it is still pretty noisy. The typhoon  rain did not start until almost exactly 3 km out (there's a long light there, so it's not an unlikely place for anything weather event). Finally, my hat was useful, to keep me dry. From Satsuki to home was about 20 km at 8 km/h, which I blame on heat, distance, and navigation, but it's a fine speed for any run over 20 km total after 3 days off.

La Base Secrète du GAMIN: Mousse of the Woods

Did a long run down to La Base Secrète du GAMIN by way of Yoyogi (I had planned to go through Omotesando, but decided it is too crowded), where I got Mousse of the Woods (森のムース; 550 yen), which is layers of pistachio mousse and praliné, though I'm not sure what, though there are walnuts on top. Also, some crunchy bottom. As before, this poor cake was put in a huge box with nothing to keep it in place but it's internal cohesion, which failed, so it got a little battered. It was a long run, about 9 km each way, 11 km/h out and 10 km/h back.

The cake was good, but definitely not excellent. Also, maybe a little sweet.

La Base Secrète du GAMIN: Winter Mousse au Chocolat

Had enough time to try a longish weekday run to a new shop, La Base Secrète du GAMIN, which is new within the last year but is actually part of a whole GAMIN group of restaurants. This one is down in the north Sengenjaya Station shopping area (you can just see it from the north east-west shopping street if you look diagonally at the right moment). Shortest way is through Shibuya Station, so I looped down the usual way turning past Aoyama Gakuen University (which has a huge mural poster up on their Ekiden running team) to the next crossing sound and came back (although I missed a turn and went a little bit out of my way on the way there). Windy today, and cooled off fast. I might have seen some slow flakes, or maybe just it was they way the streetlight reflected off stray drops in the air. I managed 11 km/h there, but with the huge sack they have me (with a huge box, relative to the cake), only 9 km/h back (over 8 km each way). That's okay. Yesterday I ran without cake, doing about 10 km total but earlier on did eight 200 m speed intervals with 14.0 km/h as the target, but five were actually 15.0+ km/h and one 16.0+ km/h, which is as much as I need of those faster speeds for now, so I'll either need to get onto doing 15 km at 11 km/h at the Moat track, or see whether I can keep up 13 km/h for intervals of 1000 m. Anyway, since I did speed and then slow jogging, that maybe counts as fat-burning training, though the method I heard was two 1000 m (separated by 3 minutes) intervals fast enough to be out of breath.

The cake, in it's huge box and bag, blown horizontal by the wind, did not stay stuck to it's plastic base, but for a mousse cake, it was fairly firm, so it was less battered than it might have been. It's mousse, but maybe with meringue for firmness? It's flavored with Yuzu and orange Bavarian cream, which is where the winter part comes from. The chocolate flavor is not strong for a mousse, but it's there and harmonizes well. It's easy to for me to say that this was definitely good (and better than a doughnut), but only over time did I final decide that I should call it excellent, requiring me to get back there fairly soon (although the selection is not huge, so I don't have to be in that big a hurry, but maybe if varies).

(Saturday) Octobre: Tarte Caramel

Used a Saturday run to buy a second cake at Octobre. Last time, I got lost coming back, so I tried a different, more directly but more back-street route, which turned out to be much easier to follow. Going back, I varied it a little bit at first to make sure something Google listed as a "Patisserie" along the way was not interesting (sign out front said rollcake and pudding, so no, not interesting), and then where the route meets up with Asterique and Bien-etre (familiar territory), I explored further back-street routes, which didn't automatically get me the best path (I hadn't researched ahead of time), but I came back an old familiar route rather than relying on Yamanote Avenue and made other slight modification that made it 400 meters longer. As planned, out was 11 km/h and back was 10 km/ for a total between 16 and 17 km.

The cake this time was Tarte Caramel (486 yen), which turned out to be a custard tart on the bottom and I'm not sure what on the top, though caramel was involved. Perhaps there was caramel mousse inside a gelatin layer of caramel, but there was not a lot of flavor anywhere in this tart, so this was just okay and I probably won't need to get there be back soon expect for the "Vostock". Note sure why the photo came out blurry again. I think I need to reset the zoom, as it's not working well with the auto-focus.

I'm late blogging because I went through and re-evaluated my top cape shops to try to get a handle on where I need to go. I had already noticed that I was neglecting some, so I decided that I needed to force them into specific size categories to organize them, or at least the top 30 or so.

The results are as follows, although it's going to be a while before I both to update the map to fully reflect this, and there will be some changes by then.

The top (supreme) shop is Jean-Paul Hévin, of course. Even if they don't have any new cakes, I'd like to get back there for either chocolat chaud or macarons.

The remaining top 3 (quite superb) shops are Dalloyau and Henri le Roux. After the below priorities, I should try another cake from Dalloyau. Henri le Roux I'm probably okay with, as I've tried a lot of their caramel's and chocolates, which are usually excellent but not on the level of great cake.

The remaining top 7 (superb) shops are Frédéric Cassel, Paris S'éveille, Pierre Hermé, and Sadaharu Aoki; these are the ones that I've over-focused on lately.

The remaining top 15 (quite excellent) shops are L'Abricotier, Au Bon Vieux Temps, Del'Immo, Limevert, Ryoco, Ryoura, Viron, and Yu Sasage. In the same class as a bakery is Le Petit Mec, which, along with Del'Immo, Limever, and Ryoura, I have not given enough attention lately.

I'm still working out the remaining top 31 (excellent) shops (I'm 2 shops over), although I've decided that Morozoff deserves to be treated as a real cake shop and visited again and of course I want to get back to Il Pleut sur la Seine again for a second cake (as least as far as this blog is concerned).

Octobre: Gateau Marron

Today was a long reconnaissance run for finding availability of two great cakes for comparison. I started by going down to Origines Cacao, though I had to be careful to avoid the Shinjuku Half Marathon, which was this morning. Fortunately, they take a bridge over Gaiennishidori (Outer Garden West Avenue), and I could escape them, although there is also a pedestrian bridge over the same road that they are on further west that would work, but I was already more west then I wanted for getting to Jiyugaoka via Aoyama Avenue while avoiding the Shibuya Station area. It was about 11 km, which I did in just under 1 h. The rest (about 17 km) today was 10 km/h average.

As it turned out, Origines Cacao not only did not have my target great cake (Martinique), they did not have any of the other three great cakes from there that I'll eventually want to do a comparison with. I'll have to check in with them in a month. Fortunately, there are a lot of things around there of interest to take me to that area. If I had been thinking more ahead, I would have also checked in at Dalloyau (I know they don't have Opale, from asking at the main shop in Ginza, but I didn't ask about any other ones, and by going early, everything would presumable be out, so I don't have to ask). I did think of check Paris S'éveille, but mainly because I wanted to get a pastry there. They had 4 of 6 great cakes out, with the other two definitely being summery. As a snack/fuel, I got Pain Chocolat (under 300 yen), which was great. It's actually really big, because there's a lot of air, and croissant buttery. It's very messy though, of course, because of the layers breaking off, and the chocolate was all along one side and I made the mistake of starting on the other side.

Even though my base cake for comparison turned out not to be available, I still tried to stick to my original plan to run to Bigarreaux, since they have a couple great cakes that I'll eventually want to compare to something, but I forgot one of the turns and overshot the shop in the direction toward my next goal, so I decided to just keep going to Octobre rather than double back. This was my first cake from them, so I picked up their card and noticed that they've crossed out 20:00 as the closing time and written in 19:00, so mistaking their closing time the other night was not so unreasonable. Since it was the recommended cake, I got the Gateau Marron (ガトーマロン; 496 yen), which, as advertised, is a very dense chestnut cake, "almost chestnut paste", the card said, although the inside is definitely dense cake (like pound cake) and the outside of the dome, which is fairly thick (maybe 1 cm in places, so it might have been about half the cake) is fairly solid somewhat hard, toward being crystalline or a hard frosting. It was not overly sweet and it was not a strong chestnut flavor, which was good for me, and I thought it was excellent enough that I should try a second cake to see whether this is really a potentially excellent shop. Not sure when I'll get a chance to get out there again, though, as I'm busy this weekend.

The next great cake to try to compare in the list is Aigre-Douce Fraicheur Framboise, which does not seem likely to be available this time of year, but I mapped out a course to there and then to Yu Sasage, which has a great raspberry chocolate cake as well and is near another shop I want to visit for a first cake, so maybe in two weeks I'll hit Octobre on Saturday and do a reconnaissance run on Sunday.