En Vedette: Tarte Fraise

At the same time I was securing a cake for a cake-off, after running to the main shop in Miyoshi, I got one new cake, since this shop is challenging to rise to a quite exceptional position. This time, I went with a cake quite similar to last time, in that it is pistachio and strawberry, but this time it's Tarte Fraise, where the base is a pistachio tart, and of course the cream above is pistachio. Usually strawberry tarts are custard tarts, but I appreciate this much better and can say it was excellent.

En Vedette, Tarte Fraise

Thursday, I made the last visit to bring En Vedette up to enough cakes to promote them to the exceptional list. Previous cakes were good enough that were was no chance of them failing to be promoted. Remaining choices of new cakes were 3 strawberry cakes and a unique-looking mont-blanc. Though I'd like to the try the mont-blanc, I figured one of the strawberry cakes deserved a try, so I went with the Tarte Fraise, which is pistachio. I appreciated strawberry and pistachio in a number of cakes, so it was perhaps the safest choice none the less. And it was definitely excellent. The interesting point is perhaps the tart, which was relatively soft for a tart but more like a butter/nut tart than, for example, a dacquoise. Very nice.

Since it was on the way, I tried to do the Takeshita clump of my neighborhood running course, but failed completely to make the correct turn on the revised Jinguumae northwest loop. In the usual spirit of sour grapes, I found one new site for the map (Sweets Paradise [Harajuku]), which nullified the previous loop. Actually, I'm going to have to split the loop to cover more of Shitatake Street (which is I'd actually like to avoid as much as a possible). Maybe next week when I'm running southwest, I'll try the clump with the two new loops again.

No running Friday, as I was busy, but I swung by the the Sadaharu Aoki counter at Isetan (which Sadaharu Aoki himself of signing, but I didn't buy that high level an item), and got a baked sweet: Cake au Chocolat Pistache. It's small, but excellent, as far as baked sweets go, versus fresh cakes. Hoping they'll have more fresh cakes, but I also wouldn't mind trying the matcha version.

Sunday cake shop tour, 3rd shop: Fraoula

Today I went last to Fraoula and got the Tarte Fraise for 540 yen, which the description says is full of strawberries, which it is. Too much strawberry for me really, although a very good tart. Notice that they are mostly whole strawberries. About Fraoula (I'm not sure whether to capitalize it, based on their card), they did have another customer around noon, but not really the volume you would want to maintain a store. Also, they use the spelling Bostock for the French toast-like pastry, with a "k", although I resisted buying, since I knew I had more than enough already, even after 35 km yesterday.

24 km to Quatre: ruban, tarte fraise, cassis

Actually, I overshot my west-east turn around and turned too soon and ended up reversing for the east-south turn, so maybe it was more like 25 km, but then I actually start earlier than I up on the maps and Google is not exact on the distance, so who knows.

It was an okay run, though I need to simplify the turns, because I'm not up for complex navigation after about half way and I might be reaching my limit, but not so much that I couldn't walk home. The end point is in front of Quatre. No pictures, sorry: photographer camera preparation failure. Also, I purchased foolishly, so no need to document that. The Ruban is 432 yen and is chocolate with praline cream (almonds). Basically, it's a standard little rectangle with layers of cake, cream, and mousse. The cake was soft sponge, though, and something harder would have been better, I think. I should eat these thing in the shop or take them home and bring their temperature down rather than eat in a hot park, but in any case, my impression is that it was not so great. Cassis (black currant) is a popular flavor in Japan, so I decided to try the so named cake for 420 yen, just as a change, but it was a mousse cylinder with a layer of fruit gelatin on top and the cylinder was kept in shape by a clear plastic ring that one could not just peal off like on the other cakes, so I had to sort of eat out from the middle, which was messy. The taste did not justify the engineering shortcomings. Finally the Tarte Fraise was a cut wedge of strawberry tart for 475 yen, and it was actually good as tarts go and I appreciated it more than the other two, but I prefer more a tartlet, so I don't need to ever go back. Maybe the bread is good, and they sold various other things, quiche, hamburgers, chocolates, and cookies. It was pretty full service.

In that neighborhood, Gakugei Daigaku (University) Station area, I recommend instead Rue de Passy for fancy French cakes (though not quite great, I've had better things there than at Quatre) or if you want something more American (if cream cheese based icing with sponge cake is American), then I recommend Matterhorn, which was doing a good business, as always. That's two shops in a row that I chose without recommendations that did not work out, so the next two should be ones that I've sampled from Isetan, which I can manage from recent visits. Nevertheless, I jotted down the name of a place I ran past for future reference, Lettre d'Amour, so maybe I will try there next as an unknown place.

Bad cake makes be crave better cake. I considered Maison du Chocolat on Aoyama Street near Omotesando Station, because I've never bought cake there, perhaps because it is expensive and the explanations generally only include common ingredients like butter, flour, and egg (but also gelatin), although they are little chocolate layer cakes. I went with Le Pain Quotidien [Which has since closed at this location, Kitaaoyama, Minato-ku] and got the raspberry chocolate mousse (ラズベリーチョコレートムース) for something like 600 yen. I know, mousse again, and the base was sponge, but it was fine, better than the earlier cakes, although not great. I think I've had better there. I'll have to try again to get great cake tomorrow perhaps from the unhelpfully named Pastry Shop. As you can see, the cake got a little beat up. There was a cardboard spacer with an ice pack, but neither the cake nor the spacer was taped down. I don't know what she had been planning to do with the fork and napkin before I stopped her.