Cake-off: Pierre Hermé's 2000 Feuille over Jean-Paul Hévin's Duja Pistache

Finally blogging about last weekend. This time's cake-off was a little challenging, because everywhere is busy with Christmas cakes. I figured department stores were my best bet. Originally, as the next cake-off, I had wanted to the Origines Cacao's Tart Citron, but when I visited on Wednesday, they didn't have it so I asked whether it was just sold out for the day or had finished its run. The latter was true, not just for the season but forever, as the counter will close Jan 15th (there was I sign which I confirmed later). If I understood the answer to my next question, the Jiyuugaoka main shop will also close, so that's it for the rising star of my list and maybe the most visited shop this year. I do not expect any more new cakes from there, so that leaves me only three priority shops which now don't need to replace something to get promoted, they just need not to get passed from behind as they move fill in the chain of gaps.

Back to the actual cake-off, where I had no trouble getting Duja Pistache from the Ginza Mitsukoshi Jean-Paul Hévin, location because of minimal line and I expected to get cake from LaDuree on the 2nd floor, but a cake I've always seen over several years was out of the line-up, hopefully just for Christmas. So I took the train to Isetan where I expected to see a couple standards of Pierre Hermé's but only found the 2000 Feuille, their praliné mille-feuille. Fortunately, it was great and I appreciated the lack of custard or cream interfering with my appreciation of the pastry, as well as just enjoying the praliné. The mousse chocolate Duga P was still great, but they have a lot of great mousse cakes and I wasn't feeling particularly attached to this one on Saturday.

The run to Ginza was pretty minimal, so I went out later again to do neighborhood run loops. I failed at the Dougenzaka--Maruyamachou--Shinsenchou loop when I forgot what the next site was and couldn't remember why I should or should not turn at the Natural Lawson. I made up for it by getting the revised Kamiyama-chou--Tomigaya--Udagawa-chou loop (for the new Shibuya LaDuree). On the way, I got some missing photographs and saw a new shop open on Aoyama-doori Ave. (on the already established route).

Sunday, I tried again to do the current version of the Daita--Daizawa--Hatagaya--Kamiyama-chou--Kitazawa--Motoyoyogi-chou--Nishihara--Ooyama-chou--Shouto--Tomigaya--Uehara loop counterclockwise. I got slightly farther than last time, which took about 2.5 hours, and then ran anther half hour to a pizza buffet that I'm still trying to work off. On the way, I tried two fresh pastries. One was the Natural Lawson across from Yoyogi-Hachiman Stn. which I turned my nose up at last time, as they were all wrapped. But at least they wrap them fancy, with part paper (which should be good for excess moisture), so I tried a Mini Cinnamon Danish, which was reasonably good, so they stay on the map.

The next pastry was 1 hour later when I circled back to one station over at Yoyogi-Uehara and I got a Bear Cub Claw from the Little Mermaid. (It was a late start and the good shops are crowded, so I was aiming low on this run.) This was as close as I could get to a pastry, but I should have gone for the donut, as this was just too white, though at least the chocolate hazelnut filling was not bad. It wasn't raw, just I think they don't use much butter or bake it very long, so its sort of a Wonderbread version of a pastry. Okay, but never again.