Critic's Review
I felt like going meatless today so I headed out to Hollywood for the Salad Bar experience. Sweet tomatoes isn't entirely vegetarian, but there isn't much available other than bread, pasta and salad. This particular location is located in that annoying center just east of 95 on Sterling; you have to drive through a massive shopping center with countless 4 was stop signs.
There's no hostess in these places, or anyone to get info from, so if you don't know how it works it's just too bad for you. There's a very long 2 sided salad bar that's identical on both sides. My first time at one of these places I had not idea if I was supposed to use one line or the other. It doesn't matter, so just try to use the one with better looking stuff or fewer people.
The way it works is that you grab a tray and a couple of plates and load up a big salad and some sides; I use one plate for a salad and another for side sales like cole slaw and pasta salads. At 2:30pm, this location was well stocked and I have to say that everything looked fresh and organized. This location is a bit better than the one in Fort Lauderdale.
Drinks are like 2.25 and you have to buy a large water; it ends up costing just over $11 with a drink for an adult. Once you're in, it's all you can eat. You've got a pretty full tray once you get to the register, so it's off to find a seat.
They have 2 separate dining rooms, use the one to the right if you need to use the bathroom. All of the stuff is in the center. There are 4 stations; one with 8 soup choices, once with breads and muffins, once with pastas and one for desserts.
All of the green salads were good; good blue cheese dressing, ripe tomatoes and the caesar and italian salads were good also.
The pasta salads were another story. I didn't like any of them; a tuna tarragon, whole wheat Italian and zesty tortellini were all too vinegary. Poppy seed cole slaw was better; a little bit too creamy, but not bad.
There wasn't much that was very good. All of the soups I had were lousy; the special minestrone tasted like vegetables in water, the also special spicy sausage and pasta has hardly any sausage and no taste, and the mongolian lentil soup had more chick peas than lentils. The mac and cheese was ok if not particularly cheesy, but the "asagio alfredo" pasta was so overdone that it couldn't be eaten.
A "Bruschetta Focaccia" was the best thing that had; not what I expected as I usually don't think of bruschetta as being cooked, but it was sort of a bruschetta pizza. A baked sweet potato was nicely cooked and kept warm in foil, but there's no butter at this place, so it wasn't as enjoyable as it could have been.
One good thing you can count on is the soft serve yogurt, available in vanilla, chocolate or combo; it's not very sweet but at the end of a very mediocre meal it makes you feel like you got your money's worth.
It's not a great buffet, but it's not a bad deal overall.
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