Le Salon Jacques Borie: Savarin au Rhum

Went to Isetan for a croissant and didn't consider carefully what having a backup of cake implied about the rest of the week, but anyway, I got the Savarin au Rhum from Le Salon Jacques Borie, as well as confirming what the next Isetan 1-week cake shop visitor is (one I'm not interested in) and that the current 3-week visiting sweets shop doesn't have fresh cake, at least not this week. Besides other shopping, when I went out by bicycle, I confirmed the Tomigaya--Yoyogi loop clockwise. One turn is still going to be hard going clockwise, because the apartment buildings aren't that distinctive, and I spaced on one turn and started down a hill but remembered what do to before getting to the next intersection and went back, so I think it's time to move on.

I've gotten somewhat used to savarin by this point, and verrine deserts to a lesser degree, but I think I'll judge this excellent. Three excellent cakes in a row doesn't have the same urgency  as under the old system, so I have a lot of places to catch up on before I get back there, but they're definitely at least a quite good shop, which suggests I should have better ranking system for these.

Cake: (Boutique) Troisgros: Sacher Abricot and Savarin au Rhum

Busy today, so no running. Was over at Odakyu, so I tried Troisgros, since they have a fairly large area in B2 of Odakyu that I noticed recently, with a cake counter (with no staff for awhile), a bread counter, and other sections that I did not notice in detail. This is actually the Boutique, and the same name is used for a café on the 8th floor and a restaurant. I haven't been that impressed by the quality of cake at the actual cafés or counters at Odakyu, but this looked above average, so I tried it.

I got the Sacher Abricot for 572 yen and the Savarin au Rhum for 540. Both were okay, but neither was great. The Sacher Abricot is feuillantine praline and chocolate biscuit (both good) with chocolate ganache and apricot (good, although too little to compete well with the chocolate, a common problem with chocolate mousse cakes). I suppose the mousse was the ganache, and made up the bulk and seemed watery to me (I don't know what that really indicates, but I don't like it), so it had merits and demerits. One Savarin au Rhum is much like another to me, but this seemed fairly average. There was another chocolate that I might have gotten if I was choosing both cakes today, but I'm not in a hurry to go back, despite it's location. It still remains true that Isetan is about the whole good place for cake among the department stores, although I know of a couple individually good cakes at Takashimaya.