Cake-off: Origines Cacao's Tarte Caramel Chocolat over Frédéric Cassel's Mille-feuille Finger Kaki

Friday, which was Labor Thanksgiving Day, I was free most of the day, so I took a long run, which ended up as 3.50 hours of running, which is the longest for a while. There was some walking and several photography stops, plus 4 snack, but most of it was a one-way neighborhood course run, so not a lot of waiting at lights until the end, when I headed from near the US Embassy to Ginza.

I did a lot of loops together, so it took so long. On the way, I headed down to Roppongi 7 again, because I had forgotten to verify a shrine. On the way back, I stopped at Mercedes Me, which is a café at the Mercedes dealer across from Tokyo Midtown, for the first snack. I got their Pain aux Raisins, which was good, though on the dry side.

Once  I got back to the main route, I could do the newly added Akasaka 8 loop, added to pick up a little park on the corner next to the elementary school. There is also a cake shop on the north end, but I think I went in too early (though the door was open), as there was nothing on display at all except samples of top designs. It's a place for decorator cakes, so I don't know yet whether they have anything ready to eat, though it's also a café, or whatever the guy there can manage, looked like. I also reconfirmed that I know the Akasaka 7 loop. Together they form a sort of shortcut across the main Akasaka-Azabudai-Roppongi-Toranomon loop, though that day I was doing the full loops back to where I started and didn't want to run twice over the same part of a loop, so I stuck to the main loop. I also reconfirmed the Motoaksaka loop and took the link up along the Akasaka Palace grounds to visit the Yotsuya East loop, though I was blocked by people directing traffic for people visiting the palace, so that part wouldn't be allowed by my rules if they were normally there. From there, I did the Akasaka 3 loop, and then over to the Nagatachou loop (though I had to double back to fix an error on the far side of the loop, since I turned to soon). From there, I went up north and did the Hirakawachou-Kioichou loop and took the long detour around Sophia University to get to my tiny Koujimachi loop, which is the farthest out on the course of the places I visited, so it's definitely out of order in terms of distance but was convenient to the other loops I was doing. After returning to Akasaka, I followed the main course down to the final loop to confirm, what I call the Akasaka east loop, which is just north of the U.S. Embassy Tokyo.

On the way there, I stopped at the Pierre Gagnaire shop and got a Pain au Chocolat. To be honest, I had eaten most of it before realizing it (because I was thinking of something else, not because I wolfed it down, which would have made quite a mess, since it had fairly delicate layering). But I'm fairly sure that it was excellent, which is why I wasn't thinking so much about it.

From there, I ran to Ginza, got my cakes, and returned home by train. I was tired, so after I organized them on the plate, my hands weren't too steady and there was an accident, so no pictures. Some caramel was lost, but I was still able to do the first-round cake-off for these too recently tried cakes and declare that I like the caramel chocolate tart best, though in my condition I was noticing that I could have used a higher drink-to-sugar ratio.