On Saturday afternoon, my family and I stopped by The Couch Tomato in West Chester, PA. I don't usually spend a lot of time in West Chester but my husband does. He easily found us a decent parking spot fairly close to the restaurant. (Hint: The parking meters nearby have free parking until 5PM on Saturday!) I believe there are some parking garages in town but they aren't quite as close to the restaurant.
We arrived around 4:30PM. Strangely, the only other people in the building were the two guys that walked in before us. However, more people arrived after we sat down, closer to 5:00.
The Couch Tomato is set up a little bit like a fast food joint. You place your order with a cashier then you find a seat until they call your name over the loudspeaker. Once you hear your name, you head back to the front area to pick up your food. You also bus your own table, separating the recyclable materials from the food waste and placing the dishware onto shelves next to the trash can. So maybe not quite like McDonald's but not like a sit-down restaurant with waiters either.
I had a grilled cheese sandwich with tomato bisque soup. The grilled cheese was delicious. It had a mix of cheeses and arugula grilled on...well, OK, I'm not sure what kind of bread it was. But the bread was chewy and crunchy at the same time. As for the tomato soup, I'm not a huge fan of tomato soup and, since this was a bisque, it wasn't quite a creamy as the tomato soup I'm used to. It wasn't the worst soup that I've had but it wasn't something I would have usually ordered.
While my food was delicious, it took a very long time to come out. My husband and my daughter ordered food and both of theirs arrived before mine. My daughter got a Hail Caesar salad and my husband got the Couch Club sandwich. (More on those later.) All of the sandwiches are grilled so I'm not really sure why my sandwich took 20 minutes to cook while his only took less than 10.
This was my daughter's Caesar salad. We both really liked it. (Yes, I tried her food too!) The salad dressing was perfect; the lettuce was nice and crisp; and the hard boiled egg was well-done. My daughter didn't like the croutons too much but she doesn't usually like croutons to begin with.
My husband had the Couch Club sandwich. This is turkey, tomato, turkey bacon, cheddar, and avocado ranch on a weird sort of sesame bread. As I said, all of their sandwiches are grilled, unless otherwise requested. I think I liked his sandwich better than mine. It was a little bit bigger so it might be difficult for small mouths to bite into but I think it would be well worth trying. The bacon was crisp, the turkey was tender...I didn't even realize there was avocado ranch on it! I would probably recommend this sandwich over the others.
Finally, my husband and I both got fountain sodas. And we both chose the cola flavor. The Couch Tomato uses New Hope fountain soda, which uses cane sugar instead of HFCS. For some reason, our sodas tasted off. We have both drank our fair share of cane sugar soda and he has had New Hope soda before. None of it tasted like this. It had a weird aftertaste that none of us liked.
As a whole, we had a rather enjoyable experience at The Couch Tomato. The only downsides were the soda and the extremely long wait for my food. Otherwise, the food was delicious and very well priced.
If you would like to see my video review of the restaurant, please click below:
I received my grilled cheese and tomato soup for free in exchange for this review. All opinions contained within are solely my own.