Critic's Review
I thought this place was terrible, and now they've closed. Coincidence?
Review 5/23/15
Sweet Tomatoes wasn't my first or second or third choice for lunch today, but on a Saturday my idea for breakfast got squashed by every place being too crowded to consider. I don't wait for breakfast. Period.
For those who don't know, Sweet Tomatoes is an all-you-can-eat soup and salad bar that also has pasta, breads and dessert. When you walk in you grab a plate and build your initial salad; both sides are the same, so go left because everyone else seems to go to the right.
They have some prepared salads (like caesar) and they the build your own with lots of ingredients. They didn't have blue cheese crumbles or decent tomatoes, and it's too much trouble for them to peel the cucumbers. Nobody peels the cukes anymore. You pay at the end and they give you a plastic cup for your drink. Over $13 for this with a beverage.
Another place with salads on flat plates.
They do have freshly brewed iced tea and it is fresh. They don't have lemon by the eat but they do have some in the fruit / dessert station. I'm not sure who is eating raw lemon straight up, but people eat lots of weird stuff these days.
As I brought the stuff into the dining room, I noticed the musty smell of the room. Great. You get used to it in a few minutes, but it's still not very nice. Not sure how these older restaurants get that smell.
There was only 1 soup that mildly interested me; they call it Yankee Clipper Clam Chowder, which they don't even have on their website under nutrition.
It wasn't bad, actually. It had large pieces of onion, which isn't good and the potatoes were rough cut, but the broth had that nice clammy milky taste. I left the potatoes and the onions but dug out the clams.
After eating most of the salad, I went back to see if there was something else I could eat. The fruit / dessert station was a joke, with whole apples, orange slices and a big bowl of chocolate mousse that has stuff that had fallen into it. An insult actually.
I didn't read the sign and took some of what I thought was penne pesto and some pedestrian looking mac and cheese.
I nearly spit out the green stuff; turns out that it's cilantro lime pasta, which is just disgusting. The regular Mac & Cheese wasn't very cheesy tasting, so I didn't bother with it.
I went back to the salad bar hoping to get some tuna salad, but they had no meat at all. There local menu says tuna tarragon but there wasn't any tuna. I just tried a bit of their "Caesar Asiago".
It tasted like they dropped in some oil to glisten the leaves, but it didn't taste like caesar at all. Another loser.
With no other food available, I figured I could at least get some ice cream. Then I got to the station. They only had nuts and oreo as toppings. Totally lame.
Ice cream at a buffet with no chocolate chips or M&Ms. Are you kidding me?
Conclusion
My conclusion is that this is the last time I'm ever going to a Sweet Tomatoes. It's completely not worth the price and they're clearly not trying to provide any quality food beyond the basic salad bar. It's simply not worth $13. I can get a decent salad at any buffet, plus lots of other food.
Why sit in a smelly dining room when you can go to HomeTown or a Sushi buffet for less or the same price?