Sweet Tomatoes is coming back to California – but not in Fresno.
Technically, the restaurant that’s reopening is Souplantation – that’s the sister brand that has the same buffet concept. The parent company of both brands closed all 97 restaurants nationwide in 2020 after it went bankrupt.
The location is slated to reopen in its former spot in Fountain Valley in 2027, according to Sweet Tomatoes.
That’s in Orange County, south of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
So, despite those rumors that went wild over the summer, Sweet Tomatoes isn’t coming to Fresno anytime soon.
It takes at least four hours to get there from central Fresno—often four hours and 15 minutes, or even 4.5 hours, according to Google Maps. It all depends on traffic, and we all know that driving through the heart of L.A. could add even more time to that trip.
Fresno loves this restaurant. So much so that a local eatery tried to imitate it, but it didn’t work out.
In a recent Fresno Bee poll, readers voted Sweet Tomatoes one of their most-missed restaurants. It finished behind The Outpost, Estrada’s Spanish Kitchen and the Old Fresno Hofbrau.
Clearly, Sweet Tomatoes and Souplantation opted to go somewhere with a lot bigger customer base to draw from than Fresno.
So the question is: Do Fresnans love this restaurant enough to travel that far for it? Maybe as a stop on part of another trip? Many of us travel to Southern California a lot for other reasons. Let us know in the poll below.
Sweet Tomatoes is one of several businesses Fresnans would like to see return to Fresno. ERIC PAUL ZAMORA ezamora@fresnobee.com
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Bethany Clough covers restaurants and retail for The Fresno Bee. A reporter for more than 20 years, she now works to answer readers’ questions about business openings, closings and other business news. She has a degree in journalism from Syracuse University and her last name is pronounced Cluff.