Tom + Chee – Columbus

My husband and I just tried for first time. Was looking forward to the chunkie tomato basil soup but it was terrible! So tomatoie like unflavorful marinara sauce. Since tomato soup is part of their brand, I’m very surprised at how terrible it is. Cosi’s is so much better! Our sandwiches were good. I appreciated the vegan cheese option but very little vegan cheese or regular cheese on either sandwich… just enough to call it grilled cheese but barely. I would go back for the sandwich, pay extra to have extra cheese but will not order the soup!

I really would like to like this place. I’ve tried it 5 times in the past 3 months that it’s been open with no luck. While the sandwiches are good, I don’t think that they’re quite worth the price. It just might be that it’s High Street pricing and campus area costs. All the sandwiches I’ve had seemed to be excessively oily on the outside, but it’s still somewhat crunchy. Grab several napkins on the way.
The Good: Sandwiches — gooey good cheese
The Tom + Chee sandwich– just like every other GC sandwich with tomatoes on it, it’s watery and is a waste of good bread and cheese.
Armagoetta sandwich– spicy, cheesy, savory, really good and thick and the cheese dribbles out hot and fresh
Grilled Mac+Chee sandwich– you get the most out of this 6 buck sandwich, great and cheesy, moist and tender, mac and cheese noodles probably bought wholesale at GFC, but it’s still delicious.
The Bad: Tomato Soup
I’ve tried all three soups and read several other reviews on here. Yes, the soup is that bad. It’s acidic and tastes like they just warmed it up. I’m a major tomato bisque cook in my family and know that if you don’t take the time to cook down the tomatoes – it’s going to taste like maranara. They try to hide the sloppy prep with «creamy» and «basil», but it’s overpoweringly bad. Honestly go out and get a can of Hunts and microwave it for a few seconds and you’ve got what this is. Avoid the soup at all costs (3 dollars?!)
The Ugly: The wait… and wait… and wait
Wait time seems to be upward of 10+ minutes no matter if it’s a ghost-​town. I’ve waited 25 minutes to get a cold sandwich that’s supposed to be hot. I’ve watched my sandwich turn into a cold pile of crap while the line person stood by and chatted up a co-​ed. My co-​workers have experienced the same level of service for pick-​up orders.

The tomato soup was god awful. It might as well have been Ragu pasta sauce. The classic grilled cheese was okay but if you have half an ounce of cooking ability in your body you could have grilled a better one yourself at a tenth the cost.
I’d like to make a prediction that once the volume of students trying out Tom & Chee for the first time subsides, they will become more vacant than a blockbuster on a Monday afternoon.

Tom and Chee is a great, fast choice to eat a well made grilled cheese with plenty of options to build your own, or tasty recommendations on the menu. I normally get the Mac and Chee with a side of Creamy Tomato Basil soup and it’s magnificently well made considering the price and speed along with the generally great service. If I’m still feeling hungry after that I get a grilled smore donut, also magnificent.
Overall Tom and Chee is a great choice and stands out from the rest of the similarly priced fast food on High Street.

Looking to try something new on a Saturday afternoon and craving some comfort food, we found ourselves at Tom + Chee by campus. Had a decent sized group: 4 adults + 1 child + 1 infant, so we decided to do our own version of family style, splitting the following choices…
1) Pesto + Turkey: good amount of meat for the sandwich, fresh tasting pesto, a solid choice.
2) Crunchy Garlic Chicken: nice combination of crunch from the garlic chips and a little heat from the sweet hot mustard.
3) Hot + Spicy: pepperoni & spicy cherry peppers for great kick, especially with added sweet hot mustard.
4) Armagoetta: spicy, layered with spicy cherry peppers, sweet hot mustard and pepperjack, between a slice each of sourdough and rye — possibly the best part! FYI… «goetta» is Cincinnati’s German-​American breakfast sausage.
5) Grilled Mac + Cheese: trust your gut on this one — you’ll both be glad you did — awesome combination of textures with crispy toasted bread and creamy mac & cheese.
6) Lil Griller: great kid’s meal, half a stacked grilled cheese (classic) plus a lil «dipper» tomato soup (or choice of chips/​fruit) + drink, all for $ 3.95 a decent value, especially for picky lil eaters.
7) Creamy Tomato Basil Soup: a little reminiscent of tomato sauce, especially for «creamy,» probably better to dip than eat by the bowlful.
BUT WAIT… THERE’S MORE!
The cashier was kind enough to bring out samples of the Grilled Cheese Donut for our table. «This one came at you from all angles.» The caramelized sugars of the perfectly grilled donut and sharpness of the melted cheddar come together for a surprisingly amazing combination of salty-​sweet flavor. Don’t second guess yourself. Just try it. Believe you me… There will be some sort of grilled cheese donut on our order next time! Divine!
The cashier’s Sparty hat might be perceived as a bold move on Buckeye turf, but he, along with the entire staff, was fun and accommodating to all our little requests (those that are part of the
territory with a 3 year old). Overall, a great experience in a laid-​back atmosphere. Just fine for kids, especially on the weekend, but this particular location could potentially get overrun with college students during the week. Fair warning, no changing table in the restroom, but to be expected right across the street from campus.
Give it a try. Good value for the money (sandwiches all the $ 5 – 7 range) — you can pay twice as much for grilled cheese no better and with an hour wait elsewhere in town.

The sandy was yum in the tum. I had the pesto and turkey and it was great (granted pesto and turkey is my favorite combination in general). HOWEVER, the soup was major disappointment! I love tomato soup and bye it in bulk at trader joes but this just wasn’t very flavorful. My sister who usually likes everything agreed. We also saw a big soup barely finished near trash. Why have a grilled cheese if you can’t dip in tasty soup? Why, oh, why.

I had heard about this place and wanted to see if it was any good… Unfortunately, it was not worth the money.
I got a half sandwich (Turkey and Pesto) and the Creamy Tomato Basil soup. Neither was any good. The soup does taste like cheap pasta sauce and at $ 3.50 for a cup, I could have bought 1 jar of better tasting pasta sauce. My sandwich was small and cold and the pesto looked/​smelled like something my cat hacked up. The $ 4 delivery fee didn’t make me feel any better (especially since it took over an 1hr to get my food!). Campus isn’t even busy at this time.
Any place has to be better than this. Pizza Rustica can have my delivery to me in under 1hr (freshly made/​hot) even during the busiest times.

Heard about this restaurant for a while and finally got to try it. I ordered the crunchy garlic chicken sandwich, added a fried egg and it was really delicious. The bread was grilled right, not too burnt and was crunchy. And you have the options to create your own grilled cheese too, or add whatever toppings you want. Kinda like chipotle but for grilled cheese.
The tomato soup was a let down, bland and unexciting. But probably because I ordered the classic tomato soup. Should have tried the creamy tomato sauce. But it was good to give a cleaner taste after that heavy grilled cheese, I just wish it was better seasoned. Price was decent, probably around $ 11ish.

This is my new favorite place! Every time I have come in I am greeted not only by the front of the house but the people cooking! We had the Tom and Chee with a donut, amazing! Even though it’s on Campus we never get anything but great service!

This was my first visit here, on my lunch. It’s 1:30 so I got a meter out front with no trouble. Stayed pretty basic for my first visit — creamy tomato soup and a grilled cheese with pesto and diced tomatoes. The food was good, but the soup is thin for a creamy soup. That might be better for dunking your sandwich in, and I ate the whole bowl by dipping my sandwich in the soup. The sandwich was good, but it didn’t have the super cheesy gooey element I wanted. Next time I will skip the diced tomatoes, they were really cold and took away from the gooey factor.

This place is more like a 3.5, but I’ll give them the benefit of a doubt, since they just opened. I grabbed dinner here yesterday, and aside from the fact that trying to find a spot to park on campus is a nightmare, I had a good experience. It’s right next to the Penn Station on campus, so in other words, there’s absolutely no where to park.
The place was very clean and new, and the girl working the register was very friendly but still getting the hang of things. I went with the Crunchy Garlic Chicken and the Flying Pig along with the chunky tomato basil and creamy tomato basil soups. Two meals and a bag of chips came out to be $ 22 which isn’t too bad. The meal itself took about 5 – 10 minutes to prepare, and I was out.
I really liked my sandwich, and the soup (chunky tomato basil) was okay, but it sort of tasted like I was eating a really thin marinara sauce. The girlfriend thought her sandwich was just average, and the turkey was a bit dry. She really liked her cream tomato basil soup though.
I don’t know if I’ll be back any time soon, since trying to park around there is a pain, but they do stay open until 3 am on Fridays and Saturdays, so if I happen to be stumbling around campus for some reason, it could happen. Also, they do deliver, but the delivery charge is very pricey, around $ 3.99 if I remember correctly. I’d have to really be craving grilled cheese to pay that.

I’d never been to a Tom + Chee before but I’d heard good things, so when I saw one on High St., I started planning my trip!
On a rainy Friday, we walked in and immediately saw bright yellow menus scattered throughout the restaurant. Thankfully, because the menu makes it a little hard to decide what you’d like — the little yellow brochure sheds a lot more light on the various choices!
We decided to split a bowl of the chunky tomato soup. I got the Swiss + Shroom and my boyfriend got the Bacon + Blue. We were going to order the bowl separately, but the friendly cashier told us that it’s a lot cheaper to get the combo with the bowl of soup and the drink, so we did that. Our total was around $ 17, which isn’t too shabby for lunch for 2. We were given a number and told the food would be brought out to us.
Within a matter of minutes, our food was in front of us. I tried everything, and it was all pretty good! My only complaint with my sandwich is that it was on rye, and I’d occasionally bite into something REALLY hard (you know when you get that sinking, «oh god, is my tooth okay?!» feeling? That hard). I’d definitely get another type of bread next time. My boyfriend’s was good too; it had a lot of bacon on it. The soup was okay — it tasted a little like heated up marinara sauce, but I liked the tomato chunks in it.
Overall, it was a pretty good experience! I’d definitely come back to try some of their other options. In the future, though, I will definitely be ordering my sandwich on another type of bread, or maybe trying their mac and cheese sandwich!

I first found Tom + Chee down in Cincinnati and I would eat there all the time, one of my favorites. Now they’ve come to Columbus!
Basically it’s speciality grilled cheese sandwiches and grilled cheese donuts and tomato soup. There are all kinds of crazy fun concoctions and you can customize your own if you desire.
Go for the Mac and cheese grilled cheese or create your own grilled cheese, add chips to the sandwich for a little crunch. Its all great, you can’t go wrong. Definitely try a donut for dessert, they’re mouth watering.
I got a combo with a specialty grilled cheese, cup of soup and a soda for just under $ 10. So it’s not the cheapest but a decent price for high quality food.