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).

Demel:

No running, although I did an indoor workout, which seemed okay, so I may try running tomorrow. The pollen count is really high, so it is hard to tell whether the cold has passed, but my nose doesn't seem infected, even though it is still afflicted.

Went to Isetan, which is still crowded from being White Day week (Monday). At least Demel finally has more cakes, so I got a Truffletorte from there for 756 yen. This is not my favorite type of chocolate cake, being layers of thick ganache, but I respect this particular one, and not just for being huge. It's good enough that I'm going to say that it is excellent. I have to be precise, because I'm finally going through all my posts and classifying cake shops as Great, Excellent, Good, etc., leaving whether I'm particularly interested in them a separate issue. Their rank depends on the cakes I've had, and I'm of course interested in the Great and Excellent ones, but I'm most interested in the ones on the borderline or for which I don't have enough information to judge. Still, I intend to get at least two cakes from each of the Excellent ones (or potentially excellent ones) before needing to get back to the Greats (from which I've sadly had to cut Aigre-Douce, which just wasn't measuring up, although it's definitely Excellent). I'll report when I've finished, but it's all being updated on the map.

Sunday: Chocolat Chic

No posts for a week because I caught a cold. I blame stress, but not from running (actually, caught it after a rest day). Thought yesterday (Monday) that today would be the day for running, but my nose is not quite there. Maybe tomorrow. Anyway, I'm updating from the weekend, now that I'm a little free.

Sunday, we got a couple pieces of cake at Isetan from Chocolat Chic, who were visiting. Only recently have I been going back to the "Good" shops that I haven't actually blogged about (or visited in more than year) to see what they are really like, at least the ones that make it easy by visiting Isetan. This was one where my complaint was, from visiting in summer, that they didn't actually have any chocolate cakes and the cakes I had gotten I thought were not special. Today's cakes were Sicily and Les Saveurs de Chocolat, for 562 each.

The Sicily is pistachio and raspberry, as a Sicily usually is. In this case, it is pistachio cream. This cake also has hazelnuts. I don't know which nut is the layer of chopped nuts that gives it some crunch, but it is excellent cake. Raspberry jam is an accept. The biscuit part is very dry, which is my preference over spongy.

Les Saveurs de Chocolat means "flavors of chocolate", and it's layers of white, milk, and bitter chocolate. Where Au Bon Vieux Temps' three-layer chocolate mousse is ice cream intense, this is subtle. And it is also excellent and gets my respect.

Also getting my respect is a website that is up to date on the fresh cakes. I'm going to have to make this place "worthy", and I'm close to being ready to make that more quantitative, although even my postings so far have not been that precise about the cakes, which is not surprising because even for a personal evaluation, drawing the line between excellent and great is difficult, much less between good and okay or sometimes okay and bad. I guess "great" is what I'm really please with, excellent I'd like to have again, good I wouldn't go out of my way for, okay I would work to avoid, and bad is obvious.

Sunday: Vincennes

Only had 13 km left in this month's running budget, which was enough to get me to Vincennes, a place I've known about for a long time and which Joshi+ finally visited, so it seemed time for me to give them a chance, despite reservations. 6.5 km of fast, which surprises me, because there was an extra slope from Meguro River to the shop. Coming back with cake, bypassing that by following the train line, was a slow 6.55 km, although there were more people and stairs involved, so maybe the hill route was the better choice.

Now I've got to figure out my weekly levels: 2.4 km very slow, 44.8 km slow, 15.2 moderate, 22.2 fast, and 0.2 very fast, which adds up to 84.8 km. Since last week's very slow was 36 km, this is a huge improvement, no matter how anything else works out. Almost no very fast+ (last week, 4 km), but fast+ of 22.4 km is still up by more than 9 km, and I had 9 km more of moderate, so about +18 km of moderate+ running. Except for at the top, huge shift upward in speed, so quite good.

The cake was Noisettine for 356 yen (not a typo). I like hazelnut cake, so this was excellent for me, so Vincennes unexpectedly becomes a high priority "worthy" shop, although I don't expect that to last (but if I consider the prices, maybe it should). Huge amount of competition around there (on my map, they are on the south edge surrounding Meguro River going past Nakameguro up to tail of Shibuya Station, east to Ebisu).

Also today, because we were in Shinbashi and I had read about this shop in Sweet Sonobe, I tried the bar at Le Chocolate de H. They have a (little) chocolate tart that is eat-in, so we got a couple drink sets for 1300 yen (the tart is 800 or 900 yen by itself, I think). It is excellent, though not really that cost effective. You have to wait 20 minutes for them to bake it, since it is hot and filled with chocolate (so great smell). Still, if you're in Ginza, have already visited Dalloyau a couple times (which is two short blocks away), and enough seats are available (only 5 total), it's probably worth having. We'd like to try their macarons some time, as would they, since they gave me both a chocolate guide and a macaron guide when I asked for their card.

Saturday: Suminami H&C, Yu Sasage

Today's route covered the Suminami History and Culture course, which is not that far from Yotsuya, but is relatively long. Started out with 6.13 km of moderate-paced running to get to the start (should have been a little shorter). The route covered the Yakushi Peaceful Wood Walk from Araiyakushi-mae Station (where I couldn't find a starting marker, which often there isn't) to Koenji Station, which runs past (P.) l'Abricotier, a shop worth checking out, and has a little path along whatever canal goes to Myoshoji Park.. From Koenji Station to Nishi("West")-Eifuku Station goes along the river (I'm not sure how to get Google Maps to show river names) Wadabori Park. There's a little construction, but the start is open and the detours are mostly obvious; however, the new map cuts into the park north of the baseball grounds, whereas the markers keep following the river for two more bridges, before heading south. Also, there is a spur to read the big map in front of the destination station which I missed on the way there but found on the way back. Part three is the Kanda River River Walk, which spends a lot of time along Kanda River, of course, which also has a lot of parks, all the way to Takaido Station. From there is Karasuyama Temple Village Walk, which actually runs along the raised expressway and the main surface street paralleling it, but has lots of parks and has a wide well-marked path along that part. This last walk ends at Chitose-Karasuyama Station, on Keiou Line. Total, I ran 16.69 km (including the unintentional detours, but not the construction detours, which weren't that big) slowly (though not that slowly). Lots of parks, rivers, and old temples. Mostly very well marked. I really like and recommend this course, although you do go through a lot of shopping streets around stations, so don't expect to race through it.

Conveniently, this put me near Yu Sasage, which is a priority "worthy" shop. This day's cake was Comparaison, which is a milk chocolate mousse cake with honey cream in the center and lemon, or at least lemon peel. I've had this basic kind of cake before (as far as chocolate mousse with lemon), but here the lemon was more intense, as juice bursts out when biting pieces of peel, and balanced delicious chocolate, despite being milk chocolate (so I still don't know why some chocolate cakes turn me off) and the base in the middle was a nut in chocolate disk (pecan, I think), a small layer of mousse above that, and a little cake disk above that go under the cream part. I mention the base, because I've had asymmetric lumps as the base of mousse cakes which did not impress me. This was 490 yen, which is fairly reasonable and was an excellent cake, so Yu Sasage remains a priority, even among worthy shops, since it could still theoretically turn out to be great. I did not, however, see any kind of fondant, so I wonder if the one I had before was just for Isetan, even if it wasn't marked that.

The trip back took longer than I intended. After eating my cake under one of the parks under the expressway (where the main surface road isn't right next to it), I followed the expressway as well as I could back to the H&C course and to part three. I had intended to get on Honan Dori, but turned too soon and end up on Inokashira Dori, which heads back toward the expressway (which dips south before heading back north, which is why I didn't walk to follow it. Well, extra distance is not terrible, so I followed Road 431 (I think it was Nakano Road) back in, going past P. Diamond and Concent, neither of which I know anything about or looked particularly special, although Concent was more a cafe and they had baked goods (and multiple customers). So the trip was 15.81 km at a slow pace.

That gives me a total of 6.1 km of moderate running and 32.5 km, so 38.6 km total, a reasonable expansion of last week's, but less than the 40 km that was my target maximum. Still, it was a busy day otherwise, so it was good to get that much in.

Sébastien Bouillet and Gaien running course

For running, I just went back to the Meiji Gingu Gaien running course, which was pretty active, even after the Tokyo Marathon. Since I did the Inner Moat course fast, I should try the Akasaka Palace two laps fast, but before that I should do the Gaien course 6 laps fast, is the logic.

As last time, I did the 1.5 km to the south startpoint, in 9'35''05, which is slow. Then, I did 6 laps, trying to stay under 34 s/100 m (there are labeled 100 m marker tiles on the course), which is safely fast for me. Really, I just need to get under 7'41''10/lap. I starting by checking every 100 m, and it took me a few to get the right pace, and then increase the interval to 200 m with the second lap, 300 m for the third lap, etc. At first, it took me a couple hundred meters to get the pace fast enough, and then I had to avoid going too fast for the first two laps. By the fifth lab, my running was becoming a little uneven (and the course is not as even as I would like, but that's true of every course). I was definitely tired at the 6th lap, although at the end I felt I was on top of the pace. Times were 7'24''25, 7'22''87, 7'21''20, 7'27''71, 7'18''02, and 7'19''94, which all qualify as fast. I went back 1.6 km in 10'12''92, which is slow again.

So I made 6 laps, 7.95 km, fast at the Gaien running course, with another 3.1 km of slow. I'm not expecting to run Thursday and will be busy Friday, probably, so my weekday running this week may be 2.4 km very slow, 5.8 km slow, 9.1 km moderate, 15.7 km fast, 0.2 km very fast, which is 33.2 km total, which is not ahead of last week's, but already I'm way ahead of all of last week on moderate+, and fast+, which was what I was after. Whether I'm busy or not this weekend for running is still up in the air.

The cake seems to be "Tendence" (or it could be "10dance", which is a boys' love manga title, apparently) for 540 yen. Like yesterday's cake, it is tea flavored with raspberry. In this case, it is a gelatinous puck, with the tea flavor on the inside and the pretty raspberry color on the outside. Actually, the gelatinous aspect was okay, but there was little taste to recommend it, so the cake overall is only okay. I'll shift this brand to "good" from "worthy", effectively replaced by Yu Sasage.

Yu Sasage: Gaien Walk

Got a second cake from Yu Sasage during their visit to Isetan before running.

For the run, I did the east half of the Shinjuku History and Culture course, Gaien Walk and Outer Moat, before following the Shibuya course to the Inner Moat and coming back through Akasaka-Mitsuke and up past Yotsuya Station. Mostly, I was really slow about it, although the point was more to get some hills in. There was 0.2 km of very fast at the beginning, and I managed a moderate speed 6.4 km for the Shinjuku H&C (despite the hills and stairs) and a little extra to cross the main road (and because I overshot the turn onto the Shibuya course), but there was 2.7 km of slow and 2.4 very slow after that, for a total about about 11.7 km.

The cake was the Perfum, which they list as a specialty. This is a tea tart with raspberry cream and jelly with rose-scented meringue and was 486 yen. I can't say that I could pick up on most of this. Certainly, there was a tart that was good, but I couldn't tell you the flavor, and the cream/meringue was raspberry. I wanted to like it, so I did and will call it great, which means that I need make a priority of getting over to Yu Sasage itself, since they are done at Isetan. Also I was reminded that shops have Isetan-only cakes, so I should check out the visiting patisserie even when it's some place that isn't otherwise a priority, just to see if there is anything special.