Cake-off: Paris S'éveille's Monsieur Arnaud over Yu Sasage's Perfum

My Sunday plan for a cake-off worked, other than falling asleep too late and waking up too early. I hope to better tonight. First was a run to Paris S'éveille, by way of Takeshita, so I could get some pictures I forget yesterday. Note sure either of these places qualifies, as candy itself does not, and I'm not sure whether the cakes on a stick are something you make, which would also not qualify. Fortunately, the current version of the neighborhood running map doesn't depend on them either way.

At Paris S'éveille, I got the required Monsieur Arnaud and carefully verified that they have no new cakes. Because this places has the best pastries I know, I also got their Croissant d'Almonde, and, no surprise, it was great, which few are. My requirement, I discovered, was that it be baked to hardness on the outside: a soggy croissant is not a croissant, or much of a pastry (thus my problem with recent Pain aux Raisins). See the nice feet?

I took the train back and got Yu Sasage's Perfum from Isetan. The next best place I've confirmed for great pastries is Sadaharu Aoki, which only has things rarely, so I could pass up getting a fresh new one: Cannelé au Chocolat. Unfortunately, though I should have predicted, chocolate and cannelé doesn't work for me. The taste is good, but I'm not thrilled by the texture, so I'll be kind and say this was good and see what they produce next month (not that they are that frequent or have the big a back catalog).

Since I had a pastry after the first run and then after lunch, I went out running again before getting to the cakes. I'm completely redoing my running maps to add all the coffee shops and convenience stores I ignored before. Even if they don't have good cakes, they have some sort of packaged snack or energy cookie that is at least good, and they sort of define the pain points of the neighborhood, so just in terms of navigation, I should include them. What a mess though. Along this, I tried a Machi Café scone from Lawson, rather than my usual during running snack. It was okay, but I think I'll stick to my rule of ignoring packed breads/pastries, at least from convenience stores, as well as cake from Caffe Veloce (my other running snack was their cheesecake, with similar results, and only slightly better tasting than the Lawson 100 cheese tart).

Finally, cake-off. This is a fourth-round cake-off from the winners bracket. Paris S'éveille's Monsieur Arnaud is heavy decadence and Yu Sasage's Perfum is light elegance. I'm into the heavy, though it was a tough decision nevertheless. So becomes the second cake to reach four straight wins, and I'm caught up with the winners bracket at least through July.