Les Cacaos: Chocolat Orange

I'm going through my list of Excellent shops and getting a fourth cake where needed. The Excellent group is a little bloated, but at the same time I'll like to promote one to Quite Excellent to fill the gap above left over from the withdrawal of Henri le Roux. There are a few Excellent shops that I can visit on a weekday, but Les Cacaos is not one of those, so I visited there today. I still get lost making the transition between the main streets radiating from Gotanda and Meguro, but it's not such a big area, so it's not such a big deal. Even though it was sunny, the temperature was forecast to peak at only 25 deg. Summer is over (and on a weekend, so no extra public holiday--bummer, but it averages out over time and holidays).

Les Cacaos seems to be expanding its lineup, though it still has the better two of the three cakes that I've had before. This time I went with Chocolat Orange. They have some non-chocolate ones now, but they are obviously first a chocolate shop, and I like chocolate, so I tried to stick with what they should do best. This is a somewhat traditional chocolate sponge layer cake with butter cream-based frosting, I think (though don't ask me to remember what the card said about it besides the obvious from the name). It was definitely good and at one point I considered rating it excellent, but I decided that this would probably not be my choice for this type of chocolate cake or for an orange chocolate cake, so I'm going to have to leave the evaluation at just good. I've demoted them down to Quite Good as a shop, but I've had one great cake from them, which will probably get used in a cake-off within this year (they're #9 of currently available cakes).

It's the weekend with two longish runs (compared to recent ones: I plan a near-marathon-length run for next Sunday, as part of a cake-off; wish me luck), so I got greedy and visited Il Pleut sur la Seine, partially to confirm currently available great cakes but also to sample their Bostock. It's of the soft variety with a relatively strong liquor taste. Definitely good but typical. The piece of matcha chiffon cake was okay.
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