Toshi Yoroizuka: Choux Paysanne

The rain continues and will get worse through Tuesday as a super-large typhoon sweeps through. Despite that, I went out Thursday night, late, and did a quick tour of the very small neighborhood course, which I'll probably revise (so the link will disappear, but I'll update with a more stable link to a total neighbor map that includes it). I shaved a couple minutes off my time but still came just a fraction under 9.500 km/h for the 3.93 km. No cake or even cake substitute, like a pastry or bread.

Friday, I went to Tokyo Midtown, where the choices were few again. One thing that I've been seeing for a long time was Choux Paysanne, which has praliné cream, which I like, so rather than get one of the chestnut or pumpkin cakes that I haven't had, I got it. I like the cream, but it needs something more substantial in terms of texture and taste. Instead it comes with choux pastry, which is just a light shell without providing much taste, and custard, which needs at least something substantial in terms of texture but does not really go with any other taste as far as I can tell. This is all more criticism of my choosing skills rather than the actual cake, since these probably meets my needs and was good even to me, just I should have taken a chance on chestnut shortcake instead.

Viron: Paris-Brest

Not well enough to run, but I kept a reservation at Viron today for lunch. As usual, the food was excellent. For desert, they had Paris-Brest, which they said they only make twice a month and it was what they were pushing, in that they brought the whole thing around on a platter for us to see. We got the first slice, I think, and it was a huge slice (for 1500 yen). This was quite different from the little individuals I've had called Paris-Brest and I can't remember what the slice from La Salon Jacques Borie was like (I was too shy to take a picture of it). Here, the balance between pastry and filling was much more to my liking than an éclair (that is, more filling), even though really there were 6 layers, as the top and bottom both had distinct inside and outside crusts with the praliné cream between, and there was also an small inner tube filled with custard, which I had not expected. Nuts were very large pieces, maybe halves. It made a strong impression, so I'm calling it great.

Also, the Baba au Rhum is still excellent.