Bien-être: Jasmine Lime

Went back to Bien-être, this time by bicycle, though it was not in fact hotter today than yesterday, maybe about the same, but apparently I was hearing about tomorrow when I thought it was going to be hotter, because they are saying 39 degC for the weekend. That's only further northwest, I hope, where they tend to make the Tokyo records. Still, it might not be until next Friday that I actually run again, since I also have a busy midweek planned with little time for running.

They did have cakes that I hadn't had before and I could even avoid the verrine and get Jasmine Lime, which I had seen before recently, so I figured it was worth keeping trying visiting despite yesterday's failure. I asked about eating in and they said that they were full, which I was okay with. Then, after I select my cake, they offered to let me sit at the counter. Not sure why the story changed, but I took it. Maybe they took a second to calculate that it was only going to take me a few minutes to eat cake by myself. Not sure whether it's cheaper. They save themselves a box, ice packs, and a bag (actually, I would have reused a bag), get a glass, plate, knife and fork dirty and use a paper napkin and a wetwipe.

I kind of messed up my review of this cake. It was going along fine at first. It's quite sweet, again reminding me of Christmas cookies like another recent cake that I didn't care much for, though moister cookies that evoke better memories, apparently. I probably wouldn't have been able to guess lime, much less jasmine, though there was a dark green bottom (which I probably would have guessed pistachio, which can be fruity). There was a layer of red in there, so that might have been from red fruit, judging from the top. The problem came at the end, when it subtly turned on me and actually the aftertaste was a little bitter, which didn't make any sense (I was expecting to get sick of the sweetness). If you look carefully, you'll notice a stem sticking up behind the cassis/currants. I think I accidentally ate that (I definitely did not eat the plastic; give me that much credit), and that's were the bitterness came from. I was mulling over calling this great even maybe but decided against it, I think before eating the cassis stem, so I'm going to call this excellent and make it a somewhat priority to give it another chance to confirm, at least if I get to a point that I'm retrying excellent cakes, which I'm on the verge of doing for some shops.

Now, Bien-être would have reached #3 status based on reviews so far, putting as among the quite superb shops, except I haven't had that many cakes from them and I've managed to avoid some that I don't expect to be thrilled by, so I'm holding off final judgement. Even for a superb shop, I'd like a few more cakes from them and their competition doesn't have anything new for me to try anyway, so their relative rankings aren't so important.

In other Bien-être news, Pistachio and Grapefruit Chiboust is back (I'm guessing that they're out of American cherries), so suddenly I'm doing a first-round cake-off for tomorrow.