What do you do when you're a 13-year-old Italian kid while your grandfather is in the hospital? You find the cafeteria. Well, at least that's what my family did. Visiting hours fell right around supper time and we figured the easiest way to maximize our time with the patriarch of the family AND fill our bellies was to eat there.
But HOSPITAL FOOD??? Boiled chicken and pudding, right? We weren't sick. Why did we have to eat this shit? To everyone's surprise, not only was the food not too bad… it was actually GOOD. There was soup. There was a short-order grill. A hot-food line. Soft drinks. After nearly a week and almost all of the daily specials, the words "visiting hours" were starting to sound as sweet as a dinner bell. While we were happy to have grandfather released, a small part of us knew we would miss that chow line between the hours of six and eight.
I feel that same nostalgia when I visit Sweet Tomatoes.
It's become a joke amongst my friends and family about me and chain restaurants. "Why," I ask them, "Would I want to eat a meal that's exactly the same here and at 1,400 other convenient locations in the world?" With such a variety of great mom-and-pop eateries in the Bay area, I'd much rather go exploring the hidden gems than the processed portions of the big-box-bistros.
Can I have my salad and eat it, too? Yes! Yes! I admit it. I like Sweet Tomatoes! It's good. It's clean. It's salad, so I can make-believe it's good for me. They have bread. They have soup. And they brew their own tea!
Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to turn up my nose to an evening at Ceviche or a fully-loaded sushi boat at Hook's for Sweet Tomatoes. But, every now and then, I just get a hankerin'. From the Asiago Caesar, to the Wonton Chicken Happiness, the Yankee Clipper Clam Chowder and the Foccacia, it's just tastes good.
I'm sure I'll have to hear about this the next time my friends suggest lunch at Applebee's or my family wants to get together at Outback. But, for now at least, I get to relive a little of the past without worrying about any relatives on a heart monitor in the next room.
Oh, and they have pudding, too.
This article appears in Dec 3-9, 2008.