Tomatoes APIZZA — Halsted

EXPERIENCE

At Tomatoes APIZZA on Halsted Road, weekday lunch gives the pizzeria’s New Haven-style cooking a self-service format. Pizza and a salad bar form the center, with garlic bread, chocolate piadina and a fountain drink part of the offering. It is a useful way to make a full lunch out of the restaurant’s pizza tradition, with room for more than one topping preference at the table.

This is the Halsted location near Grand River, a separate dining room from the Fourteen Mile restaurant. Both take part in the Farmington-area lunch buffet, but the Halsted storefront has its own recognizable look: a broad projecting canopy, black-and-white striped fascia, stone-clad piers and curved lamps above the entrance. Glass doors lead into the pizzeria, with a checker-patterned floor visible beyond them.

The appeal is the meal’s easy range. A group can explore the changing pizzas, spend time at the salad bar and finish with chocolate-filled bread, while the restaurant’s regular menu continues outside the buffet. There is no need to turn lunch into a private event or a large shared order. The recurring weekday service gives a familiar local pizzeria another way to gather people around its food.

Tomatoes identifies its style as Neapolitan by way of New Haven, with coal-fired and brick-oven pizza at the heart of the concept. At Halsted, that identity meets an ordinary lunch break rather than a formal tasting occasion. The pleasure is in a recognizable pizza lunch with a little more scope: different slices, something green alongside them and dessert already in the plan. It is the sort of outing that can begin with a simple suggestion to meet for pizza.