Paris S'éveille: Tarte Rhubarbe

I'm calling it: 35 degC is too hot for cake, even by bicycle.

My goal had been to get to Au Bon Vieux Temps, since they won a cake-off a little while back. It's really hot, so I went by bicycle. However, since Paris S'éveille hasn't had any new cakes for a while and it was a new month, I stopped by there. Even if I decided that they are a superb rather than a quite superb cake (looking like the case, but they have the disadvantage that I've had more of their limited-time cakes and their standard cakes are mainly the great ones), I would be one cake behind on them, so kind of a priority. I was still prepared to get a second cake elsewhere, on the grounds of missing a week recently, though I'm ready to call things even now.

In fact, Paris S'éveille had a few new cakes, so I took the one they were particularly recommending, the Tarte Rhubarbe, which is a hard crust type standard shallow fruit tart with flavored whipped cream on top. Not necessarily a bad idea, and certainly pretty, but for me, whipped cream and fruit rarely works, even though that's considered a pretty standard combination (such as in most Japanese "short cakes", which a recent Japanese NHK program backed me up on as having a silly name since they lack short cake, which is biscuit-like cake made with shortening, since the Japanese definition is sponge cake and whipped cream). Good tart but not that interesting to me. Of course, not being 35 degC would have been better, but probably wouldn't have changed my evaluation, bested on previous experience with this type of tart. Not the best photo, but I wanted to eat before the cream died in the heat.

At this point, I decided that it was too hot for eating cake, or carry cake in a box dangling in a bag from my handlebars, or even in fact for cycling, really, so I headed home. Until I realized that I wanted to check the line-up at L'abricotier, which was way too far north, but I went and confirmed that they still have Sicilien Figue anyway, because I'm obsessive compulsive like that, so that's want I want next weekend for the cake-off. Then I convinced myself that I should go some place local and get something that I can't get on a weekday, so I was off too far back south, though at least I talked myself down to 365 Jours, which is a apparently super-popular bakery west of Yoyogi Park (closer at least than Daikanyama). Fortunately, the line was not out the door (though there were instructions for how the line should fold if it came to that), but it still took a while to get a Canelé. I also got photos of the shop and of 15°C (not that far way; interesting number theme around). Not sure about After Hours around the corner, which is apparently on vacation until next month. The canelé was good, as expected. The shop is mostly little breads, with the only other pastries a croissant and essentially a chocolate croissant.