(Weekend) La Boutique de Joel Robuchon, Marunouchi

Busy, but cake at La Boutique de Joel Robuchon, Marunouchi Saturday. Casual cafe, one step up from Starbucks: order from menu at register, paper cups, but cake brought to table, and fancy cake.

Blanc Blanc (Chocolat  Blanc) @ 583 yen: white chocolate w. little raspberry (?).

Moelleux Ｃhocolat Amer @ 540 yen: dark chocolate layer cake with chocolate chunks.

Both good.

Sunday, 1 km @ 7'-8'/km pace, 4 km @ 6'10''-7'/km pace. No problems.

(Thursday) Frédéric Cassel: Tarte Pêches

7 km running at 7'-8'/km pace, w. 1:4 walking, okay, except pauses about the same as intersection stops, so timing not really needed for cake running.

Tendinitis in left hand, very bad. Must do research: doctor's electric current treatment, suspicious.

Frédéric Cassel: Tarte Pêches @ 648 yen.  Excellent inspiration (monthly special).  Weak, thin, hard shell holds shape of mascarpone cream. Delirious (red/Western) peach, also little unknown red fruit (raspberry?) filling.

Rational: Éclair Citron Sicilian

Got cake from Isetan first again, this time from a shop new to me, and relatively new in general, Rational. I was greedy, going the first day, so the best choice was the Éclair Citron Sicilian for 464 yen. Actually, it was good. I'm coming around to éclairs. This was was very lemony and sweet, with honey, I read. which is good and bad. It is good cake, but limited, but then an éclair is a fairly limited canvas to work with, so they did okay, just I have a lot of other cakes I want to eat. Hope to try a cake from them again eventually.

 

On the running, as planned, I did 48 mins of 7'-8'/km running in 4 min stretches separated by 1 min walking (or standing at a light, is okay, though not so many and the timing rarely works out. Still, nothing seems worse and it might be better, which I'm satisfied. If the weather cooperates, I'll try Ginza again, but I'll go as far as Maruuchi 1 if I have to (I know about 6 shops that I've never visited, all but one open until 21:00, so something should be available).

Sadaharu Aoki: Mille-feuille Vanille

Today, I ran down to Tokyo Midtown, at a 2-min running, 1-min walking, 7-8 min/km pace. My goal was to get a new flavor of kouign amann at Henri le Roux, but no change. I'll try again in a couple weeks, since I don't know their schedule. Instead, I got the Mille-feuille Vanille from Sadaharu Aoki, since I can't get it at Isetan. It's not cheap, of course, being 780 yen, and it was not really that great. It was good. It's three layers of pastry and two layers of pastry cream with no fruit. There were also pastry flakes on the side, but that's okay. The top was a hard caramel, whereas I would prefer something softer, but it doesn't make it that much more difficult to eat than it already is. As I said, it was good, but not better than that, so I am dropping them from my Great Shop list, which is down to just five: Henri le Roux, which is perfectly safe because they always have the same four cakes; Frédéric Cassel, which is one good cake from dropping off, though I've never had anything that wasn't at least excellent, but I'll want another great cake eventually to keep them; Paris S'éveille, which is in a better position as far as number of great cakes, if not physically convenient; Dalloyau, which is better on both counts; and finally Jean-Paul Hévin, which is really the one to beat and has always been my favorite.

Running was okay, but the leg is not perfect (although much better than the arm, which is the limiting factor still even in running), so I'll stick to the schedule. I got 19 km this week, 2 km at a faster 6'10'' to 7'/km pace, so next week (starting tomorrow), I want 27 km, 6 km of the faster pace. I'll also switch to about 4-min running and 1-min walking

Pierre Hermé, Madame Figaro

Got a 12th cake from Pierre Hermé at Isetan, Madame Figaro for 756 yen. It's sort of a fruit cake bottom, with really moist to the point of being almost mousse cake above it covered with meringue. It looks good and it is good, but I don't need this cake particularly, so I'm going to take this shop off my list of great shops and demote them to excellent. They do have several excellent cakes though (as do some other excellent shops), but I don't like everything they have enough that I have to keep trying everything. The chocolate shops have the advantage there, at least with me. The good news, then, is that I only have six great shops left that I need to thoroughly explore (until they disappoint me too often), and then I can finally go back to the great cakes I've found from whatever shop and start comparing them to each other to see which ones I really like.

On the running front, I did my faster speed today rather than tomorrow because it was convenient for my cake plan. I did 8 min at 7-8 min/km, in 4 2-min blocks separated by 1 min walking, and I did 2 km at 6'10'' to 7'/km in six 300- or 400-meter blocks with 100 or 125 meters walking in between. The faster speed was more natural, but I'm working on running long-distance style, leaning forward to fall and catching myself rather than pulling or pushing myself with my leg muscles, and it's not easy to do well, such as without messing up my knees. Didn't have trouble keeping up the pace for that kind of distance, but it was starting to have an impact (so to speak) by the end. Still have 4 km at the slowest pace before I set next week's goals. I'm busy part of the weekend, so I'll have to get right into it Wednesday and Thursday.

Chocolate Chic [Closed shop]]: Tarte aux Figues

Only 3 km today, 2 min running/1 min walking, but given the heat and the closeness of the shop, it was enough. I've still got 7 km more for Monday and Tuesday, which is about right. No problems with my left leg. I'm thinking (since Friday at work) that my computer use is what's hurting my left arm (enough to affect running), so I've been giving it more support and writing less.

I got the Tarte aux Figues (I think: one problem with trying to figure out the French name from phonetic Japanese is the silent letters and my shallow knowledge of French) for 561. The tart base was okay, but the figs were tougher than I expected and all I could taste was cinnamon. It was only okay, so I'm taking them off my list of potentially excellent shops. Neither of the ones I liked before were in the shop now, although that might be more of a matter of season than that they had special ones at Isetan.

Worked on my praliné cake. Made the cake biscuit again, which came out too thin, so I had a lot of burnt part to throw away (well, break off and eat), thawed the last, pretty bad attempt at the creme brulée praliné buttercream (got some crystals in it, but the smooth part tastes really good), and made some caramel-favored syrup (by caramelizing sugar, adding boiling water, and then adding an equal part of what I think the recipe calls 30 deg syrup, which just means sugar fully dissolved in water at 4:3). The actually recipe uses the syrup on various layers with different fillings, but I just put it on a side by itself and alternated with cake with the buttercream. Very good (after chilling, so the buttercream didn't just squish out). Still three more fillings to work on, as well as getting the actually biscuit consistent and the buttercream smooth.

Paris S'éveille, Savarin

Took too long a walk to Jiyugaoka and back (especially too long, because there was a lot of meandering from about Nakamekuro there Omotesando, ultimately to no purpose, but I got home okay).

The trip started out with running 2 min to walking 1 min, running 40 min total this time at what I think was a 7-8 min/km pace. In this heat, I don't need to run much faster than that, since I started about noon because I was busy in the morning.

The cake was Savarin, because I've had most of their regular cakes, and anyway this actually sounded okay for me today. As anywhere, they careful warned me that there was a lot of alcohol in it. I've yet to say "I hope so", I just tell them that it's okay. This was 600 yen. It's pretty big, maybe 10 cm across, and was quite fine. Obviously, there seems to be whipped cream on top with almond slices and I'm not sure what, some sort of dried fruit, as well as cake well soaked in sugar and rum, and I'm not sure whether there is a little custard on the bottom or it was just whipped cream had that ended up on the bottom and picked up some rum on the way that stained it a little brown. It's still not my favorite cake, but this seemed to be excellent as Savarin go and I don't regret getting it instead of something else.