(Saturday) Octobre: Tarte Caramel

Used a Saturday run to buy a second cake at Octobre. Last time, I got lost coming back, so I tried a different, more directly but more back-street route, which turned out to be much easier to follow. Going back, I varied it a little bit at first to make sure something Google listed as a "Patisserie" along the way was not interesting (sign out front said rollcake and pudding, so no, not interesting), and then where the route meets up with Asterique and Bien-etre (familiar territory), I explored further back-street routes, which didn't automatically get me the best path (I hadn't researched ahead of time), but I came back an old familiar route rather than relying on Yamanote Avenue and made other slight modification that made it 400 meters longer. As planned, out was 11 km/h and back was 10 km/ for a total between 16 and 17 km.

The cake this time was Tarte Caramel (486 yen), which turned out to be a custard tart on the bottom and I'm not sure what on the top, though caramel was involved. Perhaps there was caramel mousse inside a gelatin layer of caramel, but there was not a lot of flavor anywhere in this tart, so this was just okay and I probably won't need to get there be back soon expect for the "Vostock". Note sure why the photo came out blurry again. I think I need to reset the zoom, as it's not working well with the auto-focus.

I'm late blogging because I went through and re-evaluated my top cape shops to try to get a handle on where I need to go. I had already noticed that I was neglecting some, so I decided that I needed to force them into specific size categories to organize them, or at least the top 30 or so.

The results are as follows, although it's going to be a while before I both to update the map to fully reflect this, and there will be some changes by then.

The top (supreme) shop is Jean-Paul Hévin, of course. Even if they don't have any new cakes, I'd like to get back there for either chocolat chaud or macarons.

The remaining top 3 (quite superb) shops are Dalloyau and Henri le Roux. After the below priorities, I should try another cake from Dalloyau. Henri le Roux I'm probably okay with, as I've tried a lot of their caramel's and chocolates, which are usually excellent but not on the level of great cake.

The remaining top 7 (superb) shops are Frédéric Cassel, Paris S'éveille, Pierre Hermé, and Sadaharu Aoki; these are the ones that I've over-focused on lately.

The remaining top 15 (quite excellent) shops are L'Abricotier, Au Bon Vieux Temps, Del'Immo, Limevert, Ryoco, Ryoura, Viron, and Yu Sasage. In the same class as a bakery is Le Petit Mec, which, along with Del'Immo, Limever, and Ryoura, I have not given enough attention lately.

I'm still working out the remaining top 31 (excellent) shops (I'm 2 shops over), although I've decided that Morozoff deserves to be treated as a real cake shop and visited again and of course I want to get back to Il Pleut sur la Seine again for a second cake (as least as far as this blog is concerned).

Dalloyau: Jack O' Lantern

Went to Dalloyau in Ginza again, but, never learning, did not choose well. I got the Jack O' Lantern (540 yen). It is supposed to be kabocha cream, but at most I tasted butter, but good butter. However, I'm not out looking for cake that is just good. So even in the case of great shops, my first choice shouldn't be the novelty cake.

In terms of rank, this doesn't change how I feel about Dalloyau, but I'm moving them from the bottom "Great shop" to the top "Near-great shop". This means I can step up completing my sampling of cakes of great shops. Reviewing, my top nine patisserie-level shops for cake, in order, are (Great) Jean-Paul Hévin, Henri le Roux, Frédéric Cassel, (Near-great) Dalloyau, Paris S'éveille, Pierre Hermé, Sadaharu Aoki, Viron, and Aux Bon Vieux Temps. I also have 24 shops I rate as at least tentatively "excellent" and I don't know how many at least tentatively "good" shops, but many more than that (most of which I probably nave not posted on yet, but are on the map).

In running news, my knee seems not bad, but just in case I didn't run very fast today, staying just within the range of 8 km/h for the total 11.8 km I ran. The extra length this time came from following the Gaien Walk for the first part, though this is still only 0.9 km longer than Oct. 16 (to Viron), which was faster, but I lost some distance from deciding to be less obnoxious by not running within Ginza. My weekly budget expanded today, based on hitting 39.2 km of 9 km/h running last Sunday. I added a little to that the next day, so as of tomorrow, my budget will be 47 km, whereas I'm only at 41 km now. Think I'll do some laps tomorrow rather than rest and see whether I can still do at least 300 m stretches at 10 km/h without problems. That will give me a chance to see if the Isetan visitor now is worth visiting/adding to the map (usually, I add no matter what, but I don't need every hotel with a patisserie counter, since I've yet to find any worth bothering with, as far as their in-house stuff.