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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Do you see them? The wonderful glorious exciting apples on the tiles? I was soooo excited when I walked in…and then I got taken down a couple notches.

See…the apples are great, they really add some “crunch” to the bathroom. I was thinking that they carried that design over, so they must have also carried some of their photos or sports memorabilia or something else to make the bathroom interesting. They didn’t…I was disappointed. I’m not sure if other Applebee’s do or not, it’s been so long that I’ve been in one I just can’t remember (although I seem to recall some of them putting up sports sections and the like). The bathroom was kept up though, so they get 3.25 rolls…but I’m going to round this one up because of the apples.

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