Critic's Review
I had to drop off a return at UPS, and they're tearing up the street by the one on Las Olas, so I stopped in for a meatball sub. $2 off on the web site; I didn't feel like a 12" pizza and the 8" pizzas are like paying $7 for 2 slices with more crust. While they have online ordering; you can't use the coupons with the online ordering; you have to either call, or in my case, wait.
I ordered a meatball parm sub and told them I'd seen the $2 off "coupon" on the WWW; there's no actual coupon; if you print it out it just prints out the page. They charged my card and only gave me 10% discount by mistake so they gave me the difference out of the register. Always check your receipt.
They kept the light green chairs but the place looks more like a pizzeria now than some sort of Vegan hangout. They've put in real pizza ovens replacing the conveyer oven they had when this was Pizza Fusion.
They've moved the TV, but this still isn't a place you bring your family for Sunday dinner. No slices as far as I can tell.
After about 10 minutes, the sandwich was ready and I grabbed the bag and fled the premises.
Taking it out of the bag, the sandwich comes with coupons. Masking tape and a lot of paper around the sandwich.
Ah, the dreaded foil. The theory is that foil keeps things hot, but cheese sticks to foil.
A repeat of the Empire Pizza debacle. Amateur hour for those of you used to dealing with guys in the pizza biz for 50 years. I managed to salvage some of the cheese from the foil, yielding a messy looking sub.
A pretty good sized sub for the price; not like the $10 mini-sub you get at one of Wolf's restaurants. Good bread; I cut the sub in half and the first half was pretty good; the sauce was a bit too intense; probably from cooking down too long in the steam table; a common problem in the late afternoon.
The 2nd half didn't have enough cheese and the meatballs kept sliding out. I'm not sure if the cheese deficiency was due to foil loss or distribution by the sandwich maker, but a meatball parm sub need to have cheese in every bite. I don't get the plain meatball sandwich.
Conclusion
I'm pretty fussy about my meatball parm, but this has some potential. They only charge .35 for cheese; charge a bit more and give more please. I was paying 50 cents for cheese in the 80s. It's not sacrilege to cut the meatballs so that they stay put when you take a bite. And they have to manage their steam table so the sauce doesn't cook down to a point where it's too sweet and salty.
And if you must wrap in foil; non-stick foil is a must.
That being said, Tom's is a step up from Pizza Fusion, which was basically junk. I'm just not confident that they have to experience in the business to execute consistently, which is the key to the Pizza business.
