Viron, Menton

In a rare (though repeated the following day) event, I did not have to work late and went out to try to score a cake from one of the two three-excellent-cakes shops on the neighborhood running map. It occurred to me that I hadn't checked in at Viron, though, so I did that was was pleasantly surprised to find that they had a new cake, Menton. Like the only other Menton I've had, lemon was the main flavor, so I assume that's what Menton, France is famous for. Can't remember what the card said or tell for eating it what else is there besides custard, which seems to be the lemon part. There is thicker lighter area above it (and a nice nutty biscuit below it, almond I assume from the top) that's light brown; can you make just the burnt part of crème brulée, since this was uniform and mousse-like? Guess I need to swing by there again, though they won't have another new thing. Great cake! This works a lot better for me than a lemon tart in terms of balancing the texture of the custard against mousse, reasonably solid biscuit and some solid nuts and coating. I was looking for a great cake especially since I just had a new one from JPH, so this determines the next cake-off.

Fiorentina Pastry Boutique, Autunno

It was a hard week, so I'm behind again. Tuesday, I was late out the door, but it didn't really matter because the two local shops I want to visit were both closed already earlier than the online information I had. I had consider going back to Odakyu but decided to keep that as a backup from Wednesday and went down to Fiorentina Pastry Boutique in Roppongi Hills to recover from the previous day. I got their Autunno, which is similar in style to their Estate, which is my favorite from their. I'm not completely sure I remember what was in it, but I certainly something brulée, as their was caramelized chocolate. Also, their was alcohol, I think related to (Western) pear. It was definitely a relative sophisticated cake for adults and that was what I was in mood for, and found it excellent. Note sure that I got the spelling right, but that was closest to what I could recall of the phonetic Japanese at the time.

Pierre Hermé: Paris-Brest Classique, Carré Blanc, and Cheesecake Céleste

New Year's holidays are almost over, so I should catch up, though there was less cake and running than usual. Monday (Dec 30), I ran to Paris S'éveille, where I expected and found two reasonable cake substitutes. One, however, includes coffee gelatin, which I'm pretty sure would not agree with my mouth or stomach, so I'm going to ignore that. The other was Crème Molle, which seems to be a (custard) crème brulée, so I went with that and ate it in the shop (didn't have to wait). It was excellent, as a change, but I'm recording it as "other", not cake or pastry. Future visits will probably be either for cake-offs or pastries, but I'll watch for the rare new cake, since this is a superb shop.

The next actual cake was New Year's Eve, when I visited Pierre Hermé at Isetan to get new cake because of a recent cake-off win.

I was particularly interested in the Paris-Brest Classique, but it was cake for two, so there were two more cakes that I had half of: Carré Blanc and Cheesecake Céleste.

The Paris-Brest was standard, as expected, with choux pastry and praliné cream. Carré Blanc was very fresh tasting, based on mascarpone cheese with I can't remember what kind of herbs and spices--maybe this had ginger, though I'm also thinking something more herb-like. What I do remember was it was not trying to be subtle about the herbs/spices, nor should it, since mascarpone by itself would be quite blank. The cheesecake followed the featured "fetish", céleste, which is strawberry and rhubarb. All three cakes were good, though none of them stood out, so this shop will probably remain a cake-off only visit going forward, as it will probably have to give up its place in the superb category, where it's already had more than it's share of cakes anyway.

Caffarel: Gianduia

Had reason to be inside JR Station, so I finally got a cake from Caffarel to blog on, their signature Gianduia, which is gianduia brulée cream on top of chocolate cream with a some raspberry filling. It was definitely good, but not especially compelling among the crowded field of chocolate cakes. Strictly speaking, this was not my first cake from them, or even maybe even my first cake from them since starting to blog (and probably not my first time to even have this particular cake), but my other encounters were in Kobe.

For running, I finally got back to my neighborhood course and finished doing a one-way neighborhood run completing the Jinguumae east loop, Kita-Aoyama central loop, Minami-Aoyama north loop, and newly added Kasumigaokamachi--Kita-Aoyama loop.