Cake-off: Yu Sasage's Perfum over Viron's Mille-feuille

In the morning, I ran down to Viron in Shibuya by way of practicing/confirmed the two loops in the Jinnan clump of the neighborhood course and then getting roasted crushed peanuts from Nikunohanamasa, since I was running very low. Both the loops are newly revised and I failed on the smaller further away Jinnan loop but could do the simpler and closer but longer Jinguumae--Jinnan loop clockwise. This year, for the third-round cake-offs, I'm working through the list in order of the month I first sampled the versus just chronologically, so that I can match things up in the main season better and am not look for winter cakes in summer, hopefully. This time it was the Mille-feuille, which is available year round, like most of their cakes (the repeat rate on specials is pretty low, though the Fraise, for example, is strictly seasonal, though it's off the great list. I had a delay coming back, as I took the wrong exit (I'm being carefully and using the train to bring back my cakes) and was briefly trapped north of the Shinjuku Marathon runners.

After a half-lunch, I went out again to go to Yu Sasage and was trapped longer on the east side of slower runners, though eventually they let us through. As in other recent outward forays, I took a several photos that are aspirationally future sites on neighborhood loops, should I ever add loops that far out. Yu Sasage still doesn't have either of the other two great cakes of theirs, which have never been available for a cake-off since their appearances in '16 and '17, but they had Perfum.

I like to give honest reviews, so while Viron's mille-feuille was excellent, as a traditional mille-feuille, I wasn't feeling the need to have it in the great list at this time. I've had a lot of mille-feuille since I've last had this one, and though none of those was great, maybe I'm becoming more demanding. Or it could just be natural variation. Perfum remains a combination of fruit, pistachio tart, and meringue that I appreciate, so I don't mind giving it the win, though it's a lot less convenient to report them with an additional visit for a new cake (but the only way I visit these days, so they need the visit more).

Angelina: Strawberry White Mont-Blanc and Orange Caramel Mont-Blanc

Angelina: Mont-blanc and White Strawberry Mont-blanc

Thursday through Saturday, I was semi-busy, so all the running was on my neighborhood course trying to review and confirm loops forward and backward, as I work through my list outward. Not sure where I left things off, but I've most recently completed the Jinguumae--Kita-Aoymama--Shibuya, Minami-Aoyama 3&4, and Kasumigaoka-machi--Kita-Aoyama loops, so those are probably, which brings me up to 32 km confirm. Of course, at this point, not that I've finished with the closer ones, I spend a lot more time reaching them than running them.

Angelina: Orange Caramel Mont-Blanc

Friday evening, I intended to visit the Salon de Thé Angelina, which initially survived its department store being renovated and renamed but apparently was closed at the end of the last year. The cake counter remains selling only the mont-blancs that they are famous for (they used to have a couple other cakes as well). Now, they have 4 varieties, not including the full-sized mont-blanc. This time we got the smaller regular mont-blanc, which I've had before, plus the seasonal and monthly variations, which are Strawberry White Mont-blanc (the name might not be in that order, but but I don't want to call it White Strawberry Mont-blanc), which I think is a white chocolate paste and a strawberry in the middle, and Orange Caramel Mont-blanc, which does not have an orange in the middle, but does obviously have some orange on the outside. I liked the orange and caramel better than the strawberry, whereas my partner's preference went the reverse, both of which were pretty predictable. These were all good, including the regular version, but I'm not that into the traditional monc, even if these are fortunately all mild in terms of the chestnut taste, which can be strong in some mont-blanc. I think this shop will take up permanent, or at least as long as they continue the counter (I have to wonder who the actual maker is these days, whether it's another shop a kitchen in the department store), residence as just a good shop, which is not a horrible thing, by any means.

Les Années Folles: Pistache Griotte

After resting a day, I went for a run down to Les Années Folles to pick up a third (blogged) cake from a shop on my bloated quite good list. This is about a 10 km run, so typical, though I'm not used to running down to there directly, so there were some wrong turns.

I usually steer clear of cherry in cakes, and I've have consistently bad experiences with pistachio and cherry, though that relates to the commonness of the pairing and my trying lots of shops. Nevertheless, or because of this, it seemed time to give cherry a chance, as otherwise I've been into pistachio cakes recently, and got the Pistache Griotte. I was thinking that cherry as an accent to pistachio was reasonable, but actually this cake was more of the reverse, or maybe just a complete harmonization. In any case, it was definitely cherry and I was will to accept and appreciate that this time. The top decoration did not have much holding it place, it it ended up in a corner of the box, but mostly the cake was as original received.

Jean-Paul Hévin: Mont-Fuji and Caracas

After running maybe 15 km Friday night, 20 km Saturday morning, and 43 km Sunday, I wasn't planning to run Monday night, but I was feeling pretty good (besides being sleep-deprived from getting up too early Sunday and not making it up yet) and I wanted to get the Longchamp Chocolat from Jean-Paul Hévin to compare it to Mont-Fuji, which I already had waiting at home. However, sold-out again at Isetan, so this time I ran first to Omotesandou Hills. When they were sold-out, I didn't have much hope, but tried Tokyo Midtown, which I at least bothered to ask about how long it would be around (took the guy a long time to find the information), which is through the end of February, reportedly. I decided that for that much effort after that active a weekend I needed more cake, so I got the Caracas, which I've noted as excellent, though not recently, so I thought I'd review it. The Mont-Fuji in question came from the freezer the night before, where I'd kept it for more than a week as a experiment.

The Mont-Fuji was as a remembered it, so this might be viable option to stash cakes with brief line-up times for later. Obviously, it's not going to work with cakes with fresh fruit. The next experiment, besides storing something longer, would be to compare fresh to defrosted. No specific plans to do either. The Caracas was fine, but I think excellent is the right evaluation. I did not run Tuesday and did manage to get more sleep.

Jean-Paul Hévin, Longchamp Chocolat

Sunday, I finally did it, I ran, as a one-way neighborhood course run, the giant Daita--Daizawa--Hatagaya--Kamiyama-chou--Kitazawa--Komaba--Motoyoyogi-chou--Nishihara--Oohara--Ooyama-chou--Shouto--Tomigaya--Uehara loop, which was 35.2 km long, plus enough lead up to make it a marathon+ distance, so a massive addition to the route, though I'm not confident that I'll ever get it memorized. Along the way, I verified some new sites, so already I've split off part, but the loops are always evolving. No problem with my feet, by keeping it pretty slow, though it was so slow, and my knowledge of the route is so poor, that I almost wore out my battery (also I took about dozen pictures), so next time I do this kind of route, it better either be simpler or I should memorize more of it.

Besides some candies from Iwate and Calorie Balance cookies, I had one Pain au Chocolat from Asterisque. As usual quite a wait, though not enough to explain the 6 km/h average time. Better that that body damage, though. Still, I'll rest tomorrow from running, I hope, and get caught up on cleaning and email.

For cake, I finally got the Longchamp Chocolat from Jean-Paul Hévin at Isetan. Even around 2 pm when I got there (I started at 6:20 for the running), they had several. Hope the same is true tomorrow, because I want to do a quick turnaround on cake-offs, because this was great, as expected, totally decadent, with chocolate, meringue, both almond and just pure sugar and egg, I think. It's hard chocolate, but I don't know how it compares to the Longchamp Chocolat Noir.

Cake-off: Jean-Paul Hévin's Tonka over Sadaharu Aoki's Saint-marc Praliné

Got up early and went running for about 3 hours, includes stops for pictures. I started by going to Jinnan, so I was pre-committing to a long run, since the goal was Ginza Mitsukoshi, in the opposite direction. I verified a few things that aren't on my neighborhood running map really shouldn't be there (one site was vacant and a shop with "bread" in the title was a sandwich place), and add a few photographs of things that should, mostly non-essential (there's a Tully's in the lobby of a building). I missed a shrine, so I'll have to go back and try again (I needed to look up), but I did fill in the Aobadai loop sites and fix the route, so that's ready when I get adding to the course in that direction.

At Mitsukoshi, I saw Jean  Jean-Paul Hévin's Longchamp, so it really exists (they only had five out, compared to a dozen of most others), but I was there for Tonka. It was already past 11, so I didn't have to wait to go to Sadaharu Aoki's Saint-marc Praliné. These are both delicious cakes, but I wasn't feeling the greatness so much today (perhaps because I was tired). Still, I appreciate JPH's design and it was nice to have chocolate and tonka flavor again, so it's getting the win. I should have let the Saint-marc Praliné warm up more, as I don't think it was an optimal temperature. I'm marking this down as excellent this time, which is a way of putting it on notice as far as the great list, but since it's a one-year one-shop cake, I might not get another chance at it.

Other news is that they have the Tarte Fraise Citron for this and next month SA's main shop, but actually its the caramel salt tart that I'm on the look out this season, so that's actually a disappointment. There's still a chance that Isetan will get it.

Franzè & Evans London, Yuzu Meringue Tart

Thursday, I made my first attempt to obtain JPH's new Longchamp Chocolat, which is dark chocolate accented by pistachio in the coating. No luck at Isetan, but it was only its second day. For running, I went out for about an hour and did the planned running of neighborhood course loops, confirming my knowledge of the Kita-Aoyama central and Mianmi-Aoyama north loops, and the clockwise direction of the Kasumigaoka-machi--Kita-Aoymama loop (which is long, but is just a big loop with streets to cross). So far, I've reconfirmed only 26 km of loops, so a lot of work yet to do, but I'm still planning to try to do my first full run of a new 35 km loop plus the neighborhood course access route to it on Sunday.

I was considering resting Friday, based on sore feet in the morning and big plans for Sunday. However, I failed a second time to get the new JPH cake, so instead I started out for the Marunouchi/Ginza area to try other outlets. By that point my feet felt reasonably okay and I didn't try to run fast. Lots of cakes still at the Marunouchi JPH chocolate bar, but not that one (they had greater variety than I expected, though). After a brief detour to see whether Viron had any new since the first half of January (no), I wend down to Ginza Mitsukoshi, where they were also sold-out. After a similar brief walk to Origines Cacao, I decided that I was will to pay extra (in buying outside Isetan/Mitsukoshi), and ran to Tokyo Midtown. The original route would probably have been okay, but I deviated for lights around Shinbashi and the updated Google route had me going up a steep curved hill where the sidewalk disappeared due to construction and I was left running the street against incoming taxis (though that's a normal legal Tokyo thing, and I passed a walker near where the sidewalk resumed). At this point, it was past 8 pm and Midtown had all of two Longchamp Feuilleté (which I noticed Saturday Ginza Mitsukoshi had labeled as "nouvelle", which is technically true, though it's been in the line-up for over two months by this point and they are clearly working on selling off the current stock). Figuring I might as well finish off the set, I ran to Omotesandou Hills, where they still had an enormous about of cake, but not that one.

When I set out for Omotesandou Hills, I was planning to settle for cake from Lotus, which is a café along the Jinguumae Shopping Road. However, I also have a long list of theoretically quite good shops that I've only had two cakes from that I want to visit again, so I did that instead, Franzè & Evans London being open. I went with the Yuzu Meringue Tart (I've still yet to get anything not meringue from there), which probably closely resembles a lemon meringue pie. It definitely met my needs after the unplanned long run (I didn't have any energy foods prepared, or I would have opening something up around Tokyo Midtown). In a way, I didn't respect its crude appear to my sweet tooth, but on the other hand, I rarely see meringue cream (the topping is still soft), probably because pie and tart shops aren't my thing. In the end, I decided that excellent was a fair evaluation by my standards, so Franzè & Evans London will make the cut.