14 Juillet Tokyo: Pensee

Since Sweet Sonobe posted on 14 Juillet Tokyo, I figured I might as well try it. Also, I want to go to lunch around there Saturday morning, so I wanted scope out options in the Shin Marunouchi Building and Marunouchi Building, though mostly I just looked at the latter, since I found my cake shop before many restaurants.

The run there was a fast 12 km/h, whereas the return trip was a reasonable (for carrying cake) 10 km/h, for a today of about 11 km. I didn't run yesterday, so I was in the mood. I'm busy this weekend, so I'll probably have a lot of budget for long runs at the beginning of the week, but not now. When I've got 21 km to use on a weekday, I'd like to get down to Paris S'éveille again, this time for cake. I can just barely get there, if I'm not too busy with work, which lately I often am.

The cake was Pensee (パンセ; 470 yen), which is almond cocoa biscuit sandwiching a little raspberry jam. Sorry, must not have hit the "flower" setting on my camera, so it looks a little fuzzy. It was definitely good cake, but it took me a while to convince myself that it was excellent. It certainly isn't as complex or rich as my usual favorite cakes, but it isn't light and it's well balanced between the chocolate and raspberry. I can certainly see times when this is exactly what I would want or trying to make it myself (if I were any good at making cakes, which I'm not), and that makes it excellent cake. Also, it's a first cake from them, so they get the benefit of the doubt. It was certainly much better than I was expecting, though I haven't heard anything bad about them (or really any cake shop, except from myself).

Ginza run：Coeur Blanc from Frédéric Cassel

I did run, and, as part of my review of all posts and the implied rank of shops, decided that I stopped buying at Frédéric Cassel (in Ginza Mitsukoshi) too soon as a potentially great shop.

Started out with a moderately paced 1.85 km and then did 4.67 km fast (almost very fast), followed by 5.27 km slow coming back with the cake. Definitely felt out of shape when I started (and I'm cutting down on fat and carbohydrates until my weight gets back down a little) but I guess it was okay.

The cake is Coeur Blanc (an educated guess, versus "Cool Bran") for the not terribly reasonable 777 yen. This is white chocolate mousse around pistachio mousse accented with raspberry jam. The line between excellent and great is difficult to draw, but I find that this was perfectly balanced for what it was and this is a potentially great shop, so I'll have to say great, which means I have to continue to explore this counter as potentially great (they still had two unsampled small cakes, which is pretty good for such a small counter near closing time).