Peninsula Boutique, Okinawa Baba and Jivara Green Tea Tart

Saturday, I had and ate my cake first. Was trying to go to the Peninsula (Tokyo Hotel) Café, but didn't make the 17:00 cutoff, so got cake for two to go from the Boutique. Went with the Okinawa Baba, which looks like a (standard reverse) Mont-Blanc and the Jivara Green Tea Tart (which is not what was written on the card, which also didn't match the receipt, so I feel free to play editor based on the Japanese). There is a lot of coconut cream under the "shell" and some sort of maybe tropical fruit in the center and peach-colored sauce, which I can't identify, though there was a little banana consistency in some fruit and not in other but no such flavor. Very messy, especially with tiny plastic forks and wind. Not that into coconut, but definitely good.

The tart obviously has a big dome and is mostly green tea. The thin tart base has both a chocolate layer (the Jivara) and a dark layer of more green tea. Also difficult to eat with a tiny plastic fork just do the problem of cutting the base without breaking the fork, but could do it. Also definitely good. So it seems like a safe choice of a café before 17:00 (last seating), but neither cake sparked my particular interest, so I could recommend several definitely better places nearby for take-out at least (since Ginza Mitsukoshi isn't far). This shop goes to the fine shop list, at least until I split it, maybe into safe and fine shops. Glad to fill in some details of that area. Still a place in Marunouchi Building and one in Ginza 6 that I haven't tried in that neighborhood.

The running came later, from about 19:30. I went down to confirm counterclockwise knowledge of Sakuragaoka-chou and Shibuya east loops, though I need to look for confirmation of demonstration clockwise knowledge of the former, which it's trivial. Maybe I left that loop until redo the main loop. I also confirmed a couple more Natural Lawsons and that I can ignore a number of other shops that I marked for checking for baked goods or reasonable accessibility/quality for café cake on nearby routes. Like Friday night, the running was 1:4 walking:running, though only as a maximum, since there are lots of places around Shibuya Station where advancing at all was difficult and I ran into a baseball game letting out coming back up Gaien West, which is new for me. Total running time was about 64 minutes, which took about 2 hours total, with the walking and various investigations.

Speaking of Friday night, no cake, but I did need bread for breakfast, so I got a couple things (not shown) from Christa, and visited Daisy around the corner for the first time and got what I think was called a Cinnamon Bun. They had actual croissants, which is more definitely a pastry, but there was a sale and I didn't resist. This is a somewhat of a chain (from outside Tokyo) and small and more limited to lunch breads maybe, depending on traffic south from the station, since it doesn't seem to have anything on Christa except more of a quickie mart feel, in a clean way. The bun, which was just sufficiently pastry like to pass (versus sweet bread), was definitely good, so I was satisfied, but don't need to get back there. Now I need to hit the Akasaka bakery that I overlooked (and is going to require me to confirm the revised now 14 km long loop). With shopping, the running amounted to only 16 minutes, plus walking. Note, the bag says "patisserie", but I didn't see any signs of cakes, which would be out of place there.

Lenôtre, Feuille d'Automne

Wanted to get back home earlier and get some stuff done (which mostly I didn't and most of what I did, I didn't need to), so I went by bicycle, which also allowed my feet to run after two days in a row following more than a week of no running. Since the first cake from a new shop was great, I went back to Lenôtre at Ginza Mitsukoshi. My first choice as the second cake was Plaisir, which is like a Saint-mark, I think, but it was sold out, so I went with my next choice, which was Feuille d'Automne. This seems to be their specialty and the only reason it wasn't my second choice, was that it looked the most chocolaty, and the first cake was their straight chocolate cake (since today's wasn't available then), but actually each other cake has their different take on chocolate. This was was meringue (as a core) and chocolate, where as the other two are caramel and chocolate and (Plaisir) vanilla and milk chocolate. Anyway, this is a great cake, comparable to chocolate and meringue cakes from JPH, my top pick, so Lenôtre looks to rocket up the cake chart, as it were, though I think they have 8 things that qualify as fresh cake right now, including the verrine (which I probably will have to in their case). It looks like in the short run, I'm going to be visiting the same few shops for a while, but I need to get over to Toshi Yoroizuka, maybe weekend after next, but the Annya is in for a third-round cake-off, maybe against the loser of this weekend's second-round cake-off (since Annya is one and one).

Café Le Cordon Bleu: Earlgrey Chocolate, Macaron Chocolat Gianduja

Saturday, went to a new place for cake for two, which is to say I had half of each of these first two cakes, Café Le Cordon Bleu (supposedly the current name, though the old name is still on the receipt: Le Cordon Bleu La Boutique). It is close to the old Asakura Family Estate, which dates from early Showa (about a hundred years ago), which is a cheap (100 yen/person) visit. Back to the cafe, it is self-serve and has a limited selection of cake, pastries, bread, and simple cafe lunch, salad maybe. On a Saturday, they ran out of at least one of our cakes shortly after us, maybe a little before 3 pm.

Both of these are chocolate (there was also a strawberry mousse/cream and a cream puff), but are quite different. One is Earlgrey Chocolate, a fairly standard mousse cake, but definitely good. The tea gives, well a tea taste, but I would say it makes the chocolate a little fruity. The other cake is a macaron, Macaron Chocolate Gianduja, and I advised cutting it, though it turned out that picking it up was very possible, as there is a center of chopped nuts (I assume hazelnuts) in chocolate that acted as a central post while not offering resistance to biting (so it was sort of sticky rather than solid). This sort of heavy cake is more my preference, so I thought this was excellent. Based on two cakes, it seems a quite good shop, which is a fairly good find for just a local shop I noticed on my neighborhood route.

Le Pommier, Pour Moi

Back again to Isetan today for cake, this time for a second cake from Le Pommier, which I had one good cake from previously. This time I went for the pistachio mousse cake, Pour Moi. I like pistachio mousse, but then I've had enough to get critical. This one was up front about having raspberry jelly, which put me off some what. Actually, it had quite a bit. But in fact, the textures matched when and the flavors also did not have trouble harmonizing (raspberry sometimes is overpoweringly sweet in cakes). Not sure what the white thing is even after eating it. It's not white chocolate, it was more like hard candy but not. Like yesterday's, which was an excellent cake, which bumps the shop up to potentially quite good, so I'll try to get back there for a third cake while they are at Isetan, but not tomorrow.

For excercise, I tried walking farther. Went as far as across from Akasaka Palace on the neighbhor route, taking more than 30 minutes to reach Lawson 100 for groceries. It was enough that I could feel it in my right foot but not enough for it to linger, so I hope to try farther tomorrow to get a pastry from Libertable (I've had three weekday cakes already, so even if I fail, I won't be too disappointed).

Blondir, Nostagie

Visited Isetan for the last day of Blondir, which I had down as a good shop based on one cake. I picked Nostagie, marked as a hot seller, I think, which is like a lemon bar under whipped cream, broadly speaking. Of course, the bar part is almond (and lemon) and the maybe the whipped cream is whipped white chocolate, since that's an ingredient. On top, is probably the cinnamon. It was an interesting combination and excellent, though I'd like the bottom to be easier to cut. In that situation, turning it on it's side is the best option. With one good cake and one excellent cake, they qualify as potentially quite good, though that's a bloated category and I haven't reached the point that getting them all up to 3 cakes so that I can figure out which to drop.

For exercise, I tried walking the nearest neighborhood route, which was doable without apparent damage. Of course, it's less than how much I walk just commuting, but it's non-stop, so it is a kind of test of how my feel are healing. With my arm sprained, I can't jog anyway, but I can walk without jarring my lower arm.

Lindt: Montreux

Got a second cake from Lindt, in North Aoyama and then traced Omotesandou Doori on the older route minus a loop and missing one turn and then made a second try in the future Tougou Shrine and SDA Tokyo Central Church neighborhood. The shrine is fine, but without backtracking, there's no avoiding crowds visiting the church because it's behind the Meiji Doori Omotesandou intersection, which is usually going to be too crowded fro running. I started running faster than recently but of course was slowed down in Harajuku carring cake. I walked the last 800 m or so, as I had already run 61 minutes.

The cake was Montreux, which is a pecan brownie base with a layer of caramel chocolate mousse (though a pretty thick one) with mascarpone cheese flavored with vanilla. The vanilla cheese part is definitely good, but the rest drags it down. Not sure that a brownie is every going to work for me as a cake base, but this certainly does. I'm going to be generous and say it was at least good (rather than just okay), but there's no huge hurry for the third cake.

Presqu'île Chocolaterie, Chocolat

Couple kilometers past Shinjuku Station.

Did a long run today, about 28 km, plus another couple kilometers walking under Shinjuku Station and near Kichijoji Station. It rained in the morning and was cool to the point of being cold in just my mess running shirt, though the rain did not return despite the dark clouds all around. I knew it was a long run, so I was running between 8 and 9 km/h the whole way.

Getting near Kichijoji Station

Mid-way, in car country.

My intended target was L'epicurien, but there is not good information on when they are open other than not particularly during the posted hours, at least for cake. Today, there was a sign on the door saying that they were closed for today, though I did not read it very closely, for one reason cause it was 1 meter away, do to a shutter over the entrance. Last time I went there and they were not open for cake, at least you could go inside and see that they were not open for cake (they were just selling the non-fresh-baked baked goods, like cookies).

I had a couple alternatives that I wanted to get to in the area, so I made a second visit to Presqu'île Chocolaterie, which was open (which is kind of amazing in itself, as far as not being out of business, but someone was buying before me, so maybe they sell enough). I got "Chocolate", which is classic chocolate cake with thick layers of ganache and enough biscuit for a reasonable texture. The chocolate was a beans-to-bar Granada chocolate, which they also hard bars for. It's a little basic, but definitely excellent. That's two excellent cakes from them, so if the Excellent shops ever make room, Presqu'île is perhaps the top candidate among the Quite Good shops for promotion.

In other news, September starts tomorrow, which means we've left hottest month behind and shops can move away from summer substitutes and get back to cake. Jean-Paul Hévin has four great cakes that are being reintroduced to the line-up, one for just a month, so it's going to need to be in the next cake-off, as well as their regular Chocolate Tart, which I have not blogged yet, so maybe I'll get it (with something new from Sadaharu Aoki as a back-up, for the previous cake-off win). Another JPH great cake is thru Oct., and another is the Mont-Blanc, which is an old favorite that would otherwise be the top priority based on when I first blogged that it was great.

Les Cacaos: Cuba

Went back to Les Cacaos for a second cake, but on the way I stopped by Lily Cakes to verify their location (which I had conflicting information on) and that they were worth visiting, which they seem to be, though I didn't quite get the route right, so I need to make an earlier left turn or end up needing to plow through the crowd around Shinagawa Station (versus taking the tunnel north of the station to cross the tracks).

The cake that I chose this time was Cuba, which is a chocolate (what else) mousse dome flavored with orange. The orange is more subtle than I expected, or at least less acidic, which is probably good thing, and the chocolate had an usual usual but somehow nostalgic  flavor. I have to wonder whether it tastes like American chocolate, even though USA ('Hersey process') chocolate is famous for tasting like crap. It had a sort of syrup-like taste, though I was not other conscious that it was overly sweet, so I'm not sure what that means. In any case, it was clearly definitely excellent, and since the taste was unusual and I'd like to have it again, that qualifies it as great. So this place is quite excellent so far, but I'm not sure that they have more than one actual cake left for me to try (a tart, actually), their other similar items that I can recall being a cream puff (which I consider no more cake than ice cream in a cone is cake) and a verrine, which I've disparaged in the past but am willing to give a new look.

Heritage: Ambre Noix

Cut out of work as soon as possible (maybe rudely so, but success/failure depended on just a few minutes), and made it to Heritage in northeast Shinjuku-ku in time, though, of course, not many types of cake left just before closing. It's only about 3 km each way, which I did at 11 km/h out and 10 km/h coming back using some unfamiliar back roads.

The cake is Ambre Noix (アンブルノア; 550 yen), I think, since "amber walnut" makes more sense than "jet" (ambre noir). This is walnut, though I didn't read so carefully as to remember walnut what. I suspect some egg, like a meringue or chiboust rather than cream (chantilly), though there were multiple layers, so actually I expect both. In any case, walnut is not a common taste I get with this type of cake and I appreciated it, making this a second excellent cake from what seems to be an excellent shop, so I should get back there again in the not so distant future, although my priorities now are Limevert, Dalloyau, Noix de Beurre, and Morozoff, as well as new places.

It's been a while since I could run long two weekends in a row, so potentially I'll expand my recent two-week top amount by 10% or more, so I don't need to expand my one-week top amount this weekend. Reviewing where I went wrong last Monday, I've found that I was at 118% of my old three-day top amount, which is maybe okay, but I shouldn't be doing it at maximum speed on a cold day, for example.