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.