Cake-off: Sadaharu Aoki's Éclair Caramel Salé over Lenôtre Concerto

Monday, I didn't get out quite so early, maybe 8 am, but ran down to finish off the Roppongi 5&6 loop and then went on to explore areas southeast of there for future neighborhood run loops, though admittedly I switched to walking as it got hotter, and because it's not fun to start and stop running between sites and checking the map. I ended at Mitsukoshi Ginza to get Concerto from Lenôtre for a second-round cake-off for the losers' bracket. From there, I took the train, since it was a straight shot, and got Sadaharu Aoki's Éclair Caramel Salé at Shibuya, which is the only location currently, though I can imagine that they might make it an exclusive somewhere else in the future after it finishes its current run next week. We'll see. With two cakes, I came back by train, which required a transfer, but on the same system.

This time, I'm going with the seasonal cake, Sadaharu Aoki's Éclair Caramel Salé. I appreciated the simplicity of salt caramel filling with a minimum of pastry. I still like the varied textures of Concerto, but next time I'm going to try chilling the silverware, as well as the plate, as I want this to be less melty.

I went out in the afternoon by bicycle to work on the big neighborhood run loop, Daita--Daizawa--Hatagaya--Kamiyama-chou--Kitazawa--Motoyoyogi-chou--Nishihara--Ooyama-chou--Shouto--Tomigaya--Uehara loop and was doing pretty good most of the beginning. At Shimo-Kitazawa Station area, I was not sure where to turn after passing under the tracks, so I tried the first street and ran into three pastry shops in a block that I hadn't known about, so they've been added with a minor adjustment to the map. However, I had overlooked a Jizou nearby that is going to require I chop off the southwest corner as a separate loop, so this loop will continue to get smaller.

Tuesday, no cake. I counted up recent activity and it worked out. I'll have two more cakes during the short work week. Just, I went by bicycle to Hikarie, parked, and ran south to work on Ebisu-Nishi loops, and a few other small ones along the way, all five successful. I'll do more before I get back to the big loop. I came back and did my full indoor workout, though the running turned out to take more than 1.5 h, so I'll need to get more done on other things tomorrow.

Cake-off: Jean-Paul Hévin's Saint Honoré over Sadaharu Aoki's Éclair Caramel Salé

Got an early start (from having slept most of Sunday) on the Monday holiday, leaving at about 6 in the morning to try loops in the Azabu area. I was successful in 3 out of 4 cases, leaving a split: I did the very recently revised Nishi-Azabu--Minami-Azabu loop clockwise, and then finished off the Minami-Azabu west loop. Of course, the Azabu-Juuban loops was trivial to complete, the the tricky Moto-Azabu--Azabu-Juuban loop defeated me two places, both which I can put down to fatigue, since it was in execution rather than knowledge that I failed, though the latter was not perfect overall either, just it was not necessarily what tripped me up.

I had time before shops opened, so I went back over to the big loop circling Shimo-Kitazawa that I haven't updated the name for. I spent not much more than an hour, so I only traced about half what I did last time with only slightly better knowledge. I did find one place where a seemingly unneeded detour could be removed. I feel that I've forgotten another place that needs correctly, but perhaps I was just thinking of a Starbucks that I need to add (I should also find out of the next nearest one closed) on a loop I passed coming back.

For cake, I was not planning to do a cake-off, but just get two cakes from top shops that will only be round for a couple weeks. First I went to Hikarie close to opening time and got the Éclair Caramel Salé. For the second, I went to the Jean-Paul Hévin Marunouchi shop, since they open later than Isetan, so I figured I would have a better chance of getting the new cake starting today, and I was right. The danger there was the small supply, but rain probably was keeping people away and I had Ginza Mitsukoshi as a back-up, which also probably has a smaller demand than Isetan.

I ate Sadaharu Aoki's Éclair Caramel Salé first and decided it was great, both in terms of the caramel filling and the pastry. Of course, Jean-Paul Hévin's Saint Honoré is very similar in both, but I decide that it had more complexity, which was working for it, so I selected it as the winner, since they both seemed to be great. These two are probably going to dominate cake-offs for a while, which I may have to do extra ones for. I'm consider my cake budget for this month.