Emporter (Yotsuya), Harmonie and Gateau Fraise

Was mostly busy over the weekend. Saturday, though, I went a couple new places. One was only semi-new, and without cake: the Pierre Hermé in Marunouchi, which sells drinks, some suitable gift items, soft ice cream, and a few baked goods. We got Marron Pie and some ice cream (orange and passion fruit, maybe). The Marron Pie counts as a pastry, though it was after 4 pm, so I'm not called it fresh. Still, it was well made, so counts as excellent within that scope: no complaints.

The soft ice cream was fine, though not within my scope of interest, even with the macarons (which were particularly hard and not like macarons I've made, so I'm suspecting the modified recipe to produce something more robust and cookie-like to stand up being stuck into ice cream, though the shape was correct).

The actual cake came from a new shop in the root clump of loops in my neighbor running course, Emporter (a name shared with a Setagaya shop). I asked for a recommendation, and had suggested Harmonie, which is white chocolate with a (suitably) limited amount of raspberry. The other cake chosen was the Gateau Fraise, though I would have gone with something dark chocolate.

I thought both cakes were good, though that standout good. However, my co-eater was quite impressed by the Gateau Fraise and its generous amount of whipped cream.

Since Japanese strawberry short  (which even the name card gave as a description) is not my thing and my partner definitely does like them, I'm to assume superior power of discernment and record the strawberry cake as excellent, which at least puts this shop in the solid part of the fine shops (important, since this this and the category above it are grossly bloated, so it would only take about ten more new shops to force me to create a new lower category for most of these shops).