L'Abricotier: Maranta

As one of three shops on my Very Excellent list (bottom 8 of the top 15 Tokyo shops) with only 6 cakes tried, I did a run to P. l'Abricotier by the shortest route (according to Google), which I hadn't used in most previous runs there for some reason. It was good, but I missed the first turn coming back and I can't make my memory of where I think I went and got lost on back streets match up with what is physically possible, unless there is a wormhole in Shinjuku somewhere that takes you from the south side of Okubo Avenue to the north side without crossing the street. Since my estimated route based on where I thought I knew I was before turning onto side streets still has me running at 10 km/h, I gave up trying to figure out the impossible. I assume that I ran over 16 km total on the high side of 10 km/h both ways.

Unfortunately, the cake, called Maranta after the type of chocolate, for 460 yen, was just good, so I have to drop this shop from my Very Excellent list, since I think at least Toshi Yoroizuka is better, though there are a couple of less frequented shops that I want to get 4th cakes from before I decide which to replace L'abricotier by. The cake was a dense chocolate cake, with maybe butter-based ganache in layers between layers of dark cake. Not sure which was flavored tonka beans. Maybe only by the power of suggestion from the color of the cake, it was slightly gingery. Still an excellent shop where I've gotten good service and I've had three great cakes from there that I noticed at least two of today, so I'm be back there again relatively soon.

Friday I rested  and tried a couple Jean-Paul Hévin chocolates: Carre JPH Noir and Carre JPH Lait, where are just basic chocolate squares, for only 136 yen each. It's hard to tell from just one bit of tell, but they were definitely good. For me, the Noir was excellent. The Lait was very smooth, but in the end I'm not that into the milk taste most of the time.