Cake-off: Jean-Paul Hévin's Mont-Blanc over Aigre-Douce's Tarte Caramel Salé

Strictly speaking, I'm not behind posting, though I am behind on other types of communication, due to other obsessions.

Friday night, I worked on testing my memory of (near) neighborhood course loops. I got at least Minami-Aoyama 3&4 loop correct clockwise this time, after failing again on the Jinguumae central loop. As a snack, I got Salted Butter Bread from Pier's Cafe (I'll translate the name as), which is a croissant like roll with basically two layers created by a little butter between them (versus an actually pastry croissant, with a lot of layers with butter between). It was good and it was fresh (in that it was not wrapped and kept toasty hot by a heat lamp (so it was still warmed after I ran the loop). I had thought this was claiming to be a bakery cafe, but I was misinterpreting a single advertised menu item. It's a just a cafe, but I'll keep it on the map.

 Saturday I ran during the day. I started reasonably early, but had an afternoon dentist appointment, so I didn't want to stay out too long. I combined trying to do neighborhood course loops with getting missing photographs of new sites. For example, Crayonhouse, which has simple cakes and tarts.

What I actually bought was a wholewheat Croissant from the grocery section. The actual making has the name Natural Pao and they're in Chiba, but I'm not going to Chiba. It was definitely good. Probably because it was wholewheat, it didn't get soggy from being bagged, but it still had croissant layering of crisp buttery layers. I was not expecting the snow, which in Tokyo was supposed to be in the mountains mainly or at night, but not the morning. Not that there was a lot, but my smartphone glass is cracked and I want to protect it from moisture, so I might have done a different kind of run if I was sure that the clouds wouldn't keep all their moisture to themselves. I got as far out as Aobadai 4, where I now have photos confirming the sites on a little loop.

Sunday, I first went to P. Clair de Lune, where I had not confirmed ahead but was hoping to get a Chiboust. Alas, the chef was not able to source ingredients. He asked for my number and said he would call when he was at the preparation stage (so that would give me a couple day's notice). I was a little unsure whether that was good, since that means it's going to be too late to get what I wanted to pair it up with, but I would like ti have it again anyway. We'll see whether I come up with something else I want to match it against, since Jean-Paul Hévin at least is ending three items from it's line-up (not sure why they only list 2 on the web site; maybe they aren't offering the third everywhere now but don't want to be bothered with being precise about when and where it will finish it's appearance). Not sure when it will end, but not sure when it will end, so I switched to what would have been the plan of doing a third-round cake-off with JPH's Mont-Blanc. Unfortunately, now I was in the opposite direction from Jiyuugaoka and wasn't feeling excited about running another 20 km run to see whether they had what I wanted. It seemed more reasonable to go to Aigre-Douce, which was 9 km away, for the one great item that I know of in the line-up, Tarte Caramel Salé. Not that busy at JPH around 11:30, but we're going up on Valentines Day, which is peak chocolate madness, when they shut down the chocolate bar and use the space to sell cakes and the primo chocolate sets (for people willing to pay double to avoid the line for their regular stuff). I was not disappointed by either cake and I could not easily choose between them. In the end, thinking about which one I would least want to drop from the list (not that I do that to losers), I choose Mont-Blanc, which is a standard for me as a mont-blanc, though I can't think of any better format for sweet caramel than Aigre-Douce's Tarte Caramel Salé (because Sadaharu doesn't provide theirs again for me to check, though January was when last appeared, so I'm keeping an eye out).