My First Practice Review

OK, here we go. My first real restaurant/food review and….. I’m breaking one of my rules right off. OK, here’s the deal. This isn't really a “travel” review. This is a kind of “pre-travel” review. I mentioned before that Joan and I were going to travel back to the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. Well we have our three dogs and when we travel they have to go off to “camp.” We kennel our weimaraner Max and our beagle Roscoe at our regular kennel here in Las Vegas. But, our basenji mix, Murphy is getting up there in age (almost 18 now), so we have her vet watch her when we’re gone. What that really means is that we have two drop-offs to make.

So, our dogs have been dropped off and we still need to pack. We don’t want to cook tonight. So, where do we go? Here’s where I break my rule. We go to Sweet Tomatoes. Now this is somewhat of a national chain. I know, I know, I know, I said I wouldn’t do national chains and here I am right off of the bat.

Well, Sweet Tomatoes is, as they call it, “The Salad Buffet Restaurant.” It’s all-you-can eat and it’s specialty is salads. Also know that the first Sweet Tomatoes restaurants are known as Souplantation. Souplantation/Sweet Tomatoes has 122 locations in 15 states so I guess it’s not truly national. I can skirt the rule. *Whew*

One of the reasons that we wanted to go to Sweet Tomatoes tonight is that it was nearing the end of the Cuba portion of their “Around the World in Eight Tasty Weeks.” There are four different regions, two weeks each. I had tasted some pretty good Cuban food the last time we were in Miami (sorry, before I had the food blog idea. Next time around though) so I wanted to sample what Sweet Tomatoes had to offer.

I have to say that it was not exactly Little Havana in Miami, but it was quite good. When you first enter the restaurant, you head down the first salad line. In this line, there are all the traditional salad bar ingredients here as well as a number of pasta salads, potato salads, jello and the like. You then pay for your meal and then are seated. During slow times, you are free to sit anywhere you wish. During busy times, a host or hostess will seat you in order to keep the seating orderly and to avoid people wandering around looking for a place to sit.

Now, I mentioned that we were there during their Cuban week. There were three special Cuban dishes in the first line and of course I had to sample all three. I took a bit of the special Havana Banana salad, the Chorizo, Potato and Lime Salad and the Cuban rice and beans. I also put together a “regular” salad with some lettuce, carrot, mushroom, hard boiled egg and bleu cheese crumbles. I topped it all off with blue cheese dressing and croutons. Here’s what it all looked like when I sat down:

Overall, the salad was, well… a salad… It wasn’t wonderful, it wasn’t bad. The Havana Banana salad was very nice. The bananas were actually crunchy banana chips that added a wonderful crunch to the salad. The dressing also added a wonderful citrus hint. The potato salad was advertised as a Chorizo, Potato and Lime salad. If I had one complaint it would be that they needed a bit more chorizo. The beans and rice I felt had the perfect balance between the two. Not too many beans or too few. The rice had that great Cuban taste to and the beans just added the right amount of give to complement the firmer rice.

OK, it’s time to move on. Remember this is all-you-can-eat. Of course that is a double edged sword. Good thing, you’re not locked into just what they bring; you can eat more if you want. Bad thing, you’re not locked into just what they bring; you can eat a LOT more if you want. So, I moved on to the bread and salad area.

In this area, they serve a variety of soups, usually 4 or 5, a variety of breads and muffins and also some hot pasta dishes. In this area I grabbed the two Cuban specialties. The first was a Chorizo and Sweet Potato Soup and the second was an open faced version of the traditional Cubano sandwich. Then I turned and saw something that no one can pass up when it’s seen on a buffet line. Macaroni and cheese! It is physically impossible to pass by and NOT take some. So when I returned to my seat, it all looked like this:

The soup was very flavorful. As you will find out in reading this blog, I am not one for super spicy foods. The chorizo in this soup gave it just a bit of a kick but it was not overpowering. In my opinion, it was just enough. The Cubano again was not like getting one in Little Havana in Miami, but for what it was it worked really, really well. The bread was a simple focaccia bread. There were chunks of ham and pork to match the ingredients in an authentic Cubano. The thing that put this bread into the superb category was the pickle and mustard. There was just enough pickle on it to give you that tangy flavor but not too much that it turned it into a pickle sandwich. It was the same thing with the mustard. There was a just enough as a base on the bread and not enough to overpower the entire sandwich. As far as the macaroni and cheese, the sauce could have been a bit tighter but over all it was very good. The pasta was just al dente enough to soak up the cheese sauce.

Well it was at this point that I noticed that I missed a special Cuban item on the first salad bar. There was a Cuban French dressing that somehow missed my eye. So, being an all-you-can eat restaurant I headed back through the line and put together a simple salad of lettuce, cheese and Cuban French Dressing. On my way back to my table, I passed the pasta station. Now, remember what I mentioned just above about things that are impossible to do. See what I ended up with when I ended up back at my table:

The Cuban French dressing had a wonderful hint of citrus. It was surprisingly light for being a French dressing. The Macaroni and Cheese…. Well you already know.

Well, the time had come to leave Sweet Tomatoes for the evening. We had a wonderful meal and….. Wait, there seems to be something missing. Something that I must have overlooked the last time I was up…. Oh yeah, dessert. The double edged sword rears its ugly head again. There was one Cuban specialty dessert and seeing that I had tried EVERY other Cuban specialty item, I HAD to dish up some banana pudding. Then… I needed one more thing. So, of course if you’re going to get one more dessert item, you actually make it two. One of the “breads” that they have in the bread area is a chocolate brownie. That goes in the bottom of the bowl and then topped with chocolate frozen yogurt and caramel sauce. Altogether it looked like this:

This is the bad part of the meal…. So wonderfully bad. Now when I think of banana pudding I really don’t think Cuban but southern. That really didn’t take away from the banana goodness that was the banana pudding. No vanilla wafers though. The brownie was very rich but not overly so. It was more of a chocolate bread consistency than the dense, dense brownie texture. As with any brownie sundae, the yogurt took the rich edge off the brownie and added a smooth creaminess.

Well that’s our trip to Sweet Tomatoes (I really mean it now). We were back home to pack and then off to Minnesota later that night (red eye flight). I know that this was a long post, but there was so much to eat there. I’ll try to keep the coming posts a bit shorter. Coming up will be all the places that we ate in the St. Paul area and there were quite a few. Also, included in the next few entries will be a description of our trip to the Minnesota State Fair. There are so many things to eat there that I will barely scratch the surface, but hey; I can only eat so much.

Until next time,

Mike

The Particulars

Restaurant: Sweet Tomatoes

Location:

375 North Stephanie Street, Henderson, NV 89014

Website: http://www.souplantation.com/
Date of Visit: August 25, 2011

Time of Visit: Around 6:30PM, Dinner

Has It Been On TV?: Not that I’ve seen