Factory Shin: Mont-Blanc and Strawberry Shortcake

Went to Factory Shin in Kobe as a café (just drink and cake sets). It's modern and frequented more by young people. The selection is still fairly traditional in the sense of being the simplest standard cakes of Japanese cake shops, but they are good. We had the Mont-blanc and the Strawberry Shortcake. The Mont-blanc was definitely good, but nothing unexpected or exciting except maybe the meringue base, which is fairly thick and very sugary (I would guess just sugar and egg white, versus an almond powder based meringue), which is a good thing. Also, I should note that while this was the most common type, a reverse mont-blanc (i.e., the "blanc" is on the inside under the brown chestnut paste crown), there is candied chestnut in the center.

Strawberry Shortcake is not something that much appeals to me, but this seemed very good, maybe excellent. Unlike the picture on the website, the whipped cream layers are just 2 or 3 mm thick, which I think is actually an advantage in this case. I see from their website that actually they do sell cake in Tokyo, through Seibu in Ikebukuro, so I'll label this as Tokyo cake as well, though I've never seen their cake counter, just seen people carry their bags, so I'm not sure what they actually have.