When I first saw this place from the outside, I turned to a friend of mine and said, “Look, Tomatobee’s!” The “dancing tomatoes” around the building reminded me of the Applebee’s chain, and for a few minutes, I figured someone had pulled a pretty good satire off and called their restaurant Tomatobee’s (somehow that’s not quite as inviting as Applebee’s…). I still fondly refer to this place as Tomatobee’s, and every so often will take the forty-five minutes to an hour it takes me to get to Yuba City to grab a bite here. It’s Italian fare, I’m not sure how authentic it is, but I do know it’s tasty. A couple friends and I visited 3/19/2010; we started with the antipasto plate and I had the chicken parmesan. The others ordered Pasta Ka-Boom and Pasta Arrabiatta…I’m not opposed to spicy food, but given the opportunity for gnocchi or chicken parmesan I’ll take it every time (in that order). As you may have noticed by the decidedly American spelling, this isn’t going to be high-end Italian, but it is good food.

The bathroom was pretty standard, clean, mostly white, with a touch of red and green (kinda like the Italian flag, leading me to believe the color selection was specifically for that). The Dancing Tomato in picture #4 has horns and a hat (he’s a beefsteak tomato, of course), is on the door into the bathroom (designating “men’s”), and is just one of probably a half-dozen or so Dancing Tomatoes throughout the restaurant. Three rolls for the bathroom plus one-half for the beefsteak tomato.

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Mmm…Más! I last visited 3/9/2010, and to be honest, I don’t remember what I ate (likely an enchilada, though…if I had to guess). Every time I eat here the food is great. Everything I’ve ever had has been good, and I highly recommend you check this place out. The interior is colorful and the lighting sufficient but minimal (adding to the ambience). There were a couple friends (they were friends, they didn’t know anyone in our group) that were exceptionally unhappy…one woman had a terrible day and was taking it out on the waitstaff and manager…and despite that, the manager dealing with her and the waitstaff involved were all super-polite and more than happy to resolve her issues. True customer service, even to someone who certainly didn’t have to treat them like she did. Her friend sat idly by, listening to one complaint after another…I’m not sure how it ended, although I suspect they may have had enough alcohol to solve whatever issues were plaguing them that night. I wasn’t sure whether to feel more for the waitstaff, manager, or her friend.

Onto the bathroom…when you enter, you get to see what their current “special” is…in this case, ice-cold Tecate for $2.50. I’m not sure whether that’s good or not since I don’t really drink beer (that sound you hear is the collective gasp of beer drinkers around the world, shocked that your humble host almost never drinks beer). Above the urinal is another sign, which you probably can’t make out because it’s so blurry (I’d like to blame beer or it’s distant cousin, tequila, was at fault, but sadly, it wasn’t…the picture just came out bad…probably gotta blame the user on this one). They had a couple of glass lizards attached to the wall as a nice touch, and the handwash is an inside joke for those who know me. For their clean mostly generic bathroom I’ll give them three rolls, and add half a roll for the handwash. 

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Let me, for the benefit to  start by saying if I were to be labelled a “fanboy” of anything…Mercedes-Benz would be one I’d be close to being guilty of. Exotic cars in general, but Mercedes has a special pull for me…I’m not sure if it’s my German heritage crying out to me or just something about them…I couldn’t put my finger on it, but hey, they make some pretty cool cars. Anyway…disclaimer aside, here goes… (btw…I was here 2/23/2010)

This has literally gotta be one of the coolest bathrooms I’ve ever been in. If it were in a Honda or VW or Ford or Kia or any other car dealer (despite Honda’s near-stellar reputation, I’m not a fan…I like Ford trucks, their now-defunct Excursion, and they did probably the best job of any company of renewing the retro side of the pony car-era with the new Mustang…VW owns Audi, Lamborghini, Bentley, and Bugatti, so there’s some love there, and truthfully, although it took me a while, I like the New Beetle…I still wish it were a rear-engine configuration, but oh well)…I would feel exactly the same. No joke…this bathroom is cool! The first thing you notice when you walk in is the TV screens built into the mirror (see picture #5) and right above the urinal (see picture #1). I’m not sure if there are TV screens in the stalls, I didn’t check. Ironically, as you can see in pictures 4 and 5, the channel was on CNN, where James Lentz, President of Toyota USA, was discussing before a Senate panel the issues Toyota was having with sticking accelerators (some of those stories turned out to be fake). Finally, in pictures 6 and 7, you can see the sink they had in there. I tried to capture how the thing worked in picture #7, but it didn’t come out very well…anyway, there are no sinks per se. This is a solid slab of granite sloping toward the mirror, with a trough running behind it that collects the waste water and soap. The sink heads are automated and start when you put your hands under them (pretty standard).

For all the cool stuff in this bathroom, I’m giving it four-and-a-half rolls. “But, Bathroom Guy,” you might be asking yourself, “why only four-and-a-half? Why not five?” Let me tell ya, pardner! I’ve seen some amazing bathrooms on the web and in person (for some reason more when I was a kid than now…hmm). Although this bathroom is really cool, it can’t compare to the bathrooms in the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo for orginiality or design, and as I remember them, some of them are five-roll bathrooms).

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So on 2/20/2010, a couple friends and I visited Tugboat [London Style] Fish & Chips in Lincoln. The sign on the window says “and Sushi”…and we were a little nervous at the prospect of fish and chips and sushi. I ordered a piece of fish and a piece of chicken with chips, and they were pretty good. However…the sushi was very good! There are a few sushi places in Lincoln, so I can see why they’d serve both, but that was pretty freakin’ good sushi. I’d definitely recommend you check em out for the sushi, and give the fish and chips the ol’ college try!

The bathroom was pretty impressive…it was painted two-tone aqua and white and nicely decorated! I’m not sure what the deal was with putting the toilet paper so high (see picture #2), but that was really the only complaint I had here.  The art was pretty cool, too. Overall, I’ll give ‘em three-and-a-half rolls for a great bathroom (they would have gotten four except for that toilet paper height…I fail to see the logic in design when everything else was so well done!) I thought the flowers and bow-and-arrow set with quiver was certainly interesting. Cupid anyone?

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