Cake-off: Au Bon Vieux Temps' Marjolaine over Pierre Hermé's Tarte Infiniment Vanille

Thursday (so no cake since Sunday), I went for a long walk with a little running for lights and downhill, enough to arrive in about 110 minutes, even with with the lights I didn't beat. I was afraid that it would be three hours, so it wasn't as far as I thought and I wasn't as slow as the beginning implied. The goal was a cake-off, with the primary being Au Bon Vieux Temps' Marjolaine, a classic. I started a little after 8am, thinking they would open at 9am (based on their not up-to-date homepage), but arriving at 9:55 am, they were closed and I was first in line, arriving just ahead of the second person. I got my cake, no problem. Would have been nice if they had had one of two other great cakes not recently in the line-up, but I wasn't expecting them. I took the train back to Isetan and got Pierre Hermé's Tarte Infiniment Vanille their standard tart. Very different in size and in price, though the larger is cheaper by weight. Tarte Infiniment Vanille remains a great vanilla cake, but the variation and bitterness of the Marjolaine brings me to give the classic the win. I should say this was a 5th round for two cakes with only one loss each going in. I have have two more likely available cakes left in that group, which I plan to hit this weekend, after which I'll have to expand the competition to include two-and-two cakes. Haven't had as many new great cakes or returned great cakes this year, so I'm whipping through the planned list rather quickly. I'll put ABVT down for a backup visit this weekend if Paris S. doesn't come through with new cakes, though I'll probably also pick up something from the main Dalloyau in that case, taking care of two shops in one neighborhood visit.

Cake-off: Pierre Hermé's Tarte Infiniment Vanille over Michalak's Mont-Blanc

Last Sunday, I had a 4th round cake-off between Michalak's Mont-Blanc, which was next up based on when I first sampled it (though it's actually available year round), paired against another Isetan great cake with two wins to one loss, Pierre Hermé's Tarte Infiniment Vanille. These were definitely both great, so it's hard to decide, but I'm going with the Tarte Infiniment Vanille, which might be my favorite vanilla cake of Tokyo, though there is one more contender for that title. Maybe it will get resolved in next year's cake-offs. The Mont-Blanc, though was still great. It's distinction is a little chocolate, I think, which mellows the chestnut.

Cake-off: Pierre Hermé's Tarte Infiniment Vanille over Jean-Paul Hévin's Matcha

The (previous) cake-off of the week was sourced in the morning, and it's been too long since to remember what the running was, but I'm sure there was a lot of it, working on revised loops and clumps of loops. Jean-Paul Hévin's Matcha, which was one and one coming into a third cake-off, had just entered the line-up. I matched it up against Pierre Hermé's Tarte Infiniment Vanille just because it was convenient and I was not sure how easy it would be to get to other shops. I had forgotten that Matcha had gotten a warning the previous time around. This time too, I couldn't really remember why I singled out this cake. It's definitely at least good, but I didn't think the fruit, chocolate, and chocolate were harmonizing that well. I'd rather jettison the fruit, which seems. Pierre Hermé's Tarte Infiniment Vanille remained reliably great, so it picks up a second win and should get a fourth round this year.

Cake-off: Pierre Hermé's Tarte Infiniment Vanille over Dalloyau's Fromage Cru

Let me first say that there was a good deal of running Friday night, when the desert was a Croissant from Le Pain Quotidien at Tokyo Midtown. As the shop name suggests, this is more of a bakery, with really only this croissant and a pricey apricot (?) tart to count as pastries. The croissant was good, but very bready, even as croissants go, so not really what I'm looking for. The run was exploring loops of my neighborhood course in Roppongi, where I encountered more missing roads (relative to my interpretation of Google Maps). On the plus side, now that I've decided that pedestrian underpasses are allowable, I found a way across a main street and have merged three Roppongi loops and some of the old links to make a shorter simpler map. The little part just north of the US Embassy remains it's own loop, which I still haven't practiced yet. This is all expanding one side of the Tokyo neighborhood map.

Woke up early and hungry Saturday morning, so I got up despite not having had enough sleep. This time, I went and explored Yoyogi, taking lots of pictures, which I've added to the map. This is the other (East) side of the neighborhood map, specifically the north or counterclockwise end that I'm trying to expand. There is lots more on the southeast end, so its too big a puzzle to figure out the optimal course covering everything all at once. I left off Yoyogi and headed down to Dalloyau for Fromage Cru, stopping at a shop along the way to catch that a cake for next week was still in the line-up, which it was. From Dalloyau, I came back by train and got Pierre Hermé's Tarte Infiniment Vanille.

Both of these are losers from the first round but good enough to stay in. Also, these are pretty early in the list, so my criterion has evolved. At this point, though still excellent, the Fromage Cru is just too basic a rare cheese cake to get me excited. I'm more into double forms, with a rare layer and a baked layer, and this particular cheese flavor is good by not so special that I need it again regular. Still, I don't want to bump it down from Great based on one review, so it should make at least one more appearance. Tarte Infiniment Vanille still remains an exemplary tart and example of a "cake" with vanilla as the prominent flavor, so it's easier for me to recognize this as a great, despite my strong chocolate bias.

Cake-off: JPH "Salomé" vs. PH "Tarte Infiniment Vanille"

Wanted to do a cake-off and as potential matches for Jean-Paul Hévin's Salomé, I went down to Jiyugaoka to see whether Origines Cacao or Dalloyau had something. It was raining and I was trying a new route, though through somewhat familiar areas, and I kept getting turning around (literally, reversing directions after looking at the map, although the first time was apparently wrong) so it took longer than it should have. I came up dry, figuratively, and heading back, tried to take the intended route. I managed some of it, but again became turned around and made almost a big loop back to most of the way where the new part started, so I ended up with about 30 km total, when it should have been maybe 24 or 25 km. Speed (if I calculated correctly, based on points where I know I was) averaged 9 km/h. I should have mentioned yesterday that I ran about 27 km, split between 9 km/h and 10 km/h, and that give me almost 131 km for the week, raw, or 104 km weighted in terms of 12 km/h. My 2-week budget limit will be what's limiting me going into Friday.

Went with the backup plan of getting both cake from Isetan, JPH's Salomé (seasonal) and Pierre Hermé's Tarte Infiniment Vanille (a standard). The Salomé is vanilla mousse with a balancing amount of chocolate mousse (that is, much less). This cake is subtle, to the point that I wondered how well I flagged it as great as I started with it. The Tarte is the opposite, very heavy, very strong vanilla (in white chocolate), and is my baseline for judging anything vanilla. In the end though, the more subtle Salomé won with me, even though both cakes are great (and so welcome relieve from a string of just good cakes since last Sunday).

Take-out from Pierre Hermé

Pierre Hermé: Tarte Infiniment Vanilla

From home, we got cake from Pierre Hermé, although I looked at new place to blog, but they were out except chocolate shu cream (just like Tuesday night). Just had to put up with great cake from a great shop instead.
This time was Tarte Infiniment Vanilla again and Millefeuille Fraise Pistache (fraise pistache being the current "fetish"), for 700 and 800 plus 8% tax. The vanilla "cake" is great, which I knew already. It's vanilla in a white chocolate ganache, a rum biscuit, and vanilla mascarpone, in a tart shell.



Pierre Hermé: Millefeuille Fraise Pistache

The mille feuille is caramelized pie, strawberry compote, and pistachio-type mascarpone with freeze-dried strawberries in it, along with half a strawberry. It is very good and different.



Pierre Hermé and laps

Got cake from Pierre Hermé at Isetan today. Before eating it (or dinner), I went to Meiji Jingu Gaien and did laps. My goal was 7'30''/lap for 8 laps. My experience was 1st lap is a final warm up, 2nd lap the sweating starts, 3rd lap the muscles start to feel it, 4th lap I was hungry, 5th lap I felt like a furnace, can't remember what I thought at the 6th other than this was the lap that would determine whether I was going to have trouble, 7th picking up my feet was becoming more of a problem, and 8th (or maybe earlier) the heavy puffing started and it became an effort to keep up the pace. The times were good: 56'15''96 total, laps in order 7'03'', 7'11'', 7'10'' (so I managed to not slack off like last time), 7'00'', 7'04'', 6'59'', 6'56'', and 6'54'', with the average just under 7'02''. So I should try 7'15''/lap for 9 laps next time, although that's going to be hard (and long).

The cake for today is the Tarte Infiniment Vanille, which is a standard there, but not on the Japanese web site (a search gets a lot of French hits). It's 756 yen, so I'll probably not buy cake tomorrow, although I'd like some French bread to go with my homemade curry. This tart is vanilla all the way through, I think. The base, inside the shell, is a more dry vanilla, whereas the top is a rich mousse (I might go back tomorrow and double check the card at Isetan), now that I've eaten it. A french description is that it is white chocolate ganache and vanilla (what I figured), and vanilla mascarpone cream, which I don't know how to recognize. Anyway, this has a rich full vanilla flavor, and feels like a lot of cake, despite its small size, because of the richness. Definitely a great cake, but that's what I expected and what I went for.