(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).