Pierre Hermé, Tarte Infiniment Pistache d'Iran

Skipped a day, since really I already used the week's cake allotment, though I always planned to get ahead on the next week, since I'll be busy the following weekend. Also, I was still hoping to find another great cake to pit against a JPH cake that ends its run Saturday. In response to the previous cake-off win, I had an excuse to visit Pierre Hermé in Jinguumae to get the special Tarte Infiniment Pistache d'Iran, which seemed a good bet based on the recent hazelnut cake. I needed a half-day off to visit on a weekday, since they are only open noon to 7pm now, which is a little tight. It was tight for a morning off, too, and the web site still shows 11 to 8pm, so I had an hour to kill after my first visit. 

Jumping ahead, I did get the cake. I note that the hazelnut cake is praliné, so this pistachio cake is a lot nuttier, and a different nut, so I couldn't get into as much, and there's a lot of it. It was good, of course, but won't make the great list as I had hoped.

Back to on the way there, I hit the Harajuku Sta. area on the first pass but spent the extra hour doubling back to a café on the Sendagaya-Jinguumae boundary and then confirmed that Dandelion Chocolate no longer has macarons in the Omote-Sandou Road shop, as well as that it was empty on a weekday. I also need to update my cake post, as I'm not sure what chocolate I had the opera. They have six flavors, and I think I mistook the chocolate that wen with almond. I need to update those posts next. New places I found/revisited included the Ron Herman Café, which is a top priority as a new place to visit, being the nearest along the neighborhood running route and having several cakes (it's a chain with a shop in Kobe also). I have to wonder if it's just cake from the nearby Amiri (formerly, Nana Gâteaux), but they don't seem to be doing anything right now, so probably not. Though I'm off at least weekend Harajuku cafés for the covid duration, a new building opened near the station that has a Café Aux Bacchanales with cakes out front, though not the same as the great cakes that used to be available from Ginza. Still, I should try them. In the same building (With Harajuku) is Eataly, which I should sample something from. The other one I'm most interested is the Depla Pol Chocolatier, which connects two otherwise dead-end back streets in the maze-like area there south of Takeshita Street, but there are up to four more, though one relates to Shiseidou Parlor, and is on the 8th floor, so maybe irrelevant for both running and take-out cake (which I can get from Isetan).

As a non-cake place, I got the An Scone from Toraya Café An Stand. It was good, which no problems with the an. 

 

Paris S'éveille, Tarte Rhubarbe Orange

Sunday, I went out to get a new cake from a superb shop, specifically, Tart Rhubarb Orange, or maybe they used French spelling. You aren't allowed to take pictures. The tart seemed to be pistachio.

On the way, I hit a local shop in the Jinguumae/Kita-Aoyama area north of Omote-Sandou Sta., which was actually not that far out from home, though that's why it's a high-priority area. They had a selection of 7 kinds of baked goods. I went with the Matcha Donut. It was good. It was a quite moist (but not wet) cake donut. The other things were similarly vegan pseudo-healthy things. Though the staff was Japanese, when spoke English to me, the website shows a young Euro-looking family of three, and the person behind me was a young white woman, which is a tough market segment in this travel environment. Just because of their selection, and the college-aged English speaking Japanese staff, I wonder whether they are related to the folks to took over the bakery Tournage one running neighborhood loop to the north, who were also doing the vegan baked good things. They had a kitchen, though it's the middle of Tokyo, so it wouldn't be hard to move containers of small baked goods from any of hundreds of shops. Anyway, one shop to visit down, and I found another one I hadn't recorded one building further along (I knew they sound some coffee, as well as whatever their main thing was, but I hadn't noticed the baked goods before).

The tart reminded me of rhubarb pie, which my mother frequently made but I did not appreciate, so it was usually made at the sime time apple pie was made. It was good, but too much of what I'm not interested in. I have no memory already of what running if any I did. It was a lot of walking carrying cake and an umbrella, so probably I didn't.

the whatever spelling they are using. . Actually, I intended to get them from two, but it didn't work out. It was raining, so I went walking with an umbrella.