Evanston lunch group -- picnic June 19 Tomate Fresh Kitchen

The Evanston Lunch group will meet for a picnic (weather permitting) at 12:30 on Thursday June 18. We will order fod from Tomate Fresh Kitchen, 914 1/2 Noyes, next door (literally!) to Al's Deli. This is purely takeout, so we cannot eat in the space (or rather lack thereof), but will take the food across the street to the picnic tables in front of the Noyes Art Center.
The business started when Tania started selling empanadas at the Evanston winter market. Her empanadas were one of the main draws of the market for me! She was successful enough to start up in the much larger May-October market, where she still has a stall, but for the past 2 years has opened up her place on Noyes, which, aside from empanadas, has tacos, gorditas, etc. I still go principally for the empanadas, which have a really light crust, a variety of interesting fillings (constantly changing), and are baked, not fried. Everything else is cooked to order, and looks excellent.
I actually don't know if they have drinks (I suppose they do) since I take whatever I buy home. But, worst comes to worst, D&D is across the street. I suggest you bring plates, knives (for sharing; plastic knives rarely do the trick), etc.

I'll be there. Wish me happy anniversary at the picnic.

Will do!

Sounds good. I'll do my best to be there.

Good luck! We like their food but every single time--we've given them three chances--our order comes with food missing, wrong, or otherwise confused. We've given up complaining...hope your feast goes off without a hitch.

There is some possibility that there will be rain, and perhaps even a thunderstorm, on Thursday. What would you all suggest as a back up option? Is there some place inside where we could take the food? Could we postpone until Friday (when there is a considerably smaller chance of rain ... for the time being!)?

rgl201 wrote:There is some possibility that there will be rain, and perhaps even a thunderstorm, on Thursday. What would you all suggest as a back up option? Is there some place inside where we could take the food? Could we postpone until Friday (when there is a considerably smaller chance of rain ... for the time being!)?

Friday would work for me. As back up, we could do worse than to eat at Al's Deli next door. Since the NU quarter is over, our fairly small group could probably get seats there on Thursday.

Either option would be fine with me.

Friday's fine for me.

Let's change it for Friday, then, and hope the weather cooperates.

Sounds good. See you Friday!

Tarte Tatin will join us on Friday.

I'll be coming.

I will join you. Just saw that you had changed the day as yesterday I couldn't.

We enjoyed only tacos with sides of beans and rice from Tomate due to their catering a Northwestern graduation gig. (Thanks, Robert, for making sure we were fed!) We had a chicken, carne asada, and vegetarian taco each. They were very good, so much so, that Cabbagehead and I tried their empanadas this morning at the Evanston Farmers Market. The empanadas are different since they are baked, but the crusts were delicious and the fillings we tried--cauliflower and ground beef--were also very tasty. I need to get over to Tomate Fresh Kitchen more often.

Picnicing with tacos