Pièce Montée, Thé Vert

No running today. Since I planned (and did) my indoor workout, I went to Ginza by bicycle and visited Pièce Montée for a fourth cake. I decided to be more adventurous and get Thé Vert, which is working hard to be Japanese. Besides the green tea, it has a couple beans, and lots of sesame (seems like). The top fell off the base tart, but I could put it back, though the very top might have originally been better centered. Anyway, it was definitely good and had similar texture and sweetness to other cakes. Interesting enough to recommend but not really my thing.

This shop is now tied for top of the quite fine shops and could replace one of shops at the bottom of the exceptional list, but not today.

Pierre Gagnaire: La Panthère Verte

Thursday night, I went down to Pierre Gagnaire in the ANA Intercontental in Akasaka. This is a fifth cake from a cake in my excellent list, leaving just one to bring up to five. I decided to try the La Panthère Verte, which has been there for at least a little while, along with other matcha (powered green tea) versions of cakes. La Panthère seems to be their signature cake, though I've never had it (and it wasn't available Thursday evening). Besides green tea, there were beans, as a another traditional Japanese sweets touch. Both aspects were fine, though not more than that. The cake was much more gelatinous than I expected, dominated overly by the outer layer that is holding the design. I still give it credit for concept and quality at what it was, so it was good, but I'm less interested in trying La Panthère now. Still, they'll stay in the excxellent group for a six cake.