Touma’s Caged Heroine Ice Cream? Sign me the fuck up!
I managed to go to the cafe last 13th July as there were still seats available on the same day. During my lunch break, I called the number on the Otomate Garden Twitter account to reserve a table for 17:30.
Because it was a sudden decision, I had no A3-sized hard cases where I could place the paper placemats that they hand out when you order a collab dish; thankfully, my cafe time was an hour after I was set to leave the office, so I used my spare time to go to Seria (a 100-yen store) at Marui Ikebukuro to buy three A3-sized and B6-sized hard cases for the coasters and the placemats.
I arrived at the cafe with a minute to spare, and once I told my name at the counter, they led me to my seat.
Since summer is always a pain and I needed something refreshing, I ordered Touma’s Mango Lassi for my drink.
Just my luck, I got a Touma drink coaster for this order.
I ordered something light for my main course (I had a full lunch on that day), which was an Amnesia-inspired meal (they served it previously at the Amnesia Collab Cafe back in 2017) called ‘Meido no Hitsuji-Created Hot Egg Pastrami Sandwich’ (冥土の羊特製エッグパストラミチーズホットサンド).
Every collab dish you order will grant you an A3-sized placemat made of paper.
My first draw happened to be… Kazuma from LoverPretend.
I find it annoying that despite the huge sales that Otomate makes every year, they can’t be bothered to make PVC placemats instead of lousy plain paper. I guess they also want to sell overpriced A3-sized hard cases in the cafe to add to their sales.
Still dehydrated and sweating (it was a long walk from the west side of Ikebukuro all the way to east), I ordered Takeru’s Mohito and got Kazue Souma’s drink coaster in return.
After my stomach settled down a bit, I then ordered the very dessert I had been waiting for: Touma’s Caged Heroine Ice Cream!
Too full to eat anything else, I decided to take photos of the cafe’s interior.
After taking photos and eating my ice cream, at one point, I think the heat exhaustion was just getting into me, so I ordered another dessert, which is a combined dessert plate from the series Hakuouki/Piofiore no Banshou.
I gotta say, while it did look appetizing, it tasted… “unique”, and I’m being very nice about it.
After gobbling the mediocre dessert plate, I decided to buy the cafe merch, namely the acrylic stands.
To maximize the space and the cafe time, Otomate Garden decided to allow attendees to go to the cafe in 30-minute intervals, so when the group before us left, I took the time to take photos again.
… And bought more drinks because I was simply parched.
Right: Orlok’s Odd-Eye Drink (CC Lemon + Grenadine)
If there’s one good thing that I got from eating that cake and crepe, it’s getting the ‘Secret’ placement.
Around 15 minutes before my cafe stay ended at 19:00, the staff asked if I was ready to exchange my placemat cards to actual placemats.
As soon as they handed it out, I placed it in the hard cases to protect it from getting torn, then paid at the counter.
Usually, collab cafes can end late as they’d like to accomodate as much people as possible, but since there’s a “curfew”, the cafe closed at 20:00.
With the collab cafe extending until the end of August 2021, I might actually go back if I have time. The food wasn’t too bad, and so were the drinks.
However, the pain in the ass part would be to bring around a bag that could accomodate an A3-sized hard case since I’ll be receiving the placemats/posters. While I can order a non-collab cafe dish as not to receive the placemat, it wouldn’t make sense, given that the reason why I even bothered going to the cafe was for the collab food and drinks.
Other than that, I’ll most likely write about my cafe experience again since I’ll be ordering different dishes and drinks for variety.
Till next time!
Wanderlust 