Sweetwater, East Fremantle: rhetoric gives reality the slip
Sweetwater in East Fremantle didn’t live up to recommendations, but maybe it was because the head chef was away.
I love this notice on Sweetwater’s website. “We’d like to remind all our guests that management reserve the right to refuse entry to any person considered unsuitably dressed. The below dress is considered unacceptable: board shorts and swimwear; caps; male singlets or tank tops; hi-vis, manual work clothing or boots; ripped, scruffy or dirty clothing; thongs, unclean or untidy footwear.”
If you’ve been to the Qantas Lounge at Perth airport lately you’ll know that excludes about half the city.
Never mind; there are enough appropriately attired drinkers in Freo to keep this apartment building rooftop venue choofing along to rotten music and “craft” beers. Sweetwater is a bar and restaurant, but mostly a bar.
The pitch: Mod Asian dining in a bar environment, with the terrace a prime position in clement weather, which is pretty frequent in the West. Beneath the louvred pergola are stylish communal tables; paper napkins say a fair bit about the pitch: casual. But we’d heard a bit about the place and the east coast background of a chef. It seemed worth a drive south from the city.
The reality: Our otherwise excellent waiter makes three mistakes. He admits to recognising your correspondent and lays it on too thick; gets overexcited about having a critic in the house and delivers food at an unwarranted wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am pace; and tells us the head chef is in Melbourne.
The last bit certainly helps explain the disparity between anecdotal rhetoric and reality. The difference between a bad restaurant and good one is often the ability to consistently deliver regardless of the roster. I don’t wish to be rude about the chef on duty but the food didn’t exactly sing. No, I’d say it mumbled out of tune.
The cuisine: The menu boasts a “strong focus on modern Asian cuisines”, whatever they are. But if you take many of the elements of Thai regional food — seafood, turmeric and coconut milk in the south; papaya, chilli, lemongrass, lime and basil from elsewhere — you’ll have an idea. Throw in a Malaysian curry puff here and a few Cantonese steamed dumplings there, and you get the picture. Eastern staters may use a Longrain or a Gingerboy for reference.
Highlights: The actual cuttlefish used with a rice and tapioca flour batter and fried for the ubiquitous but often lovely salt and pepper cephalopod (insert your slippery squid thing here) was excellent: springy, thick-cut, fresh as. Cuttlefish is usually really good in Perth. But the dish itself, with a scattering of chilli and spring onion, a wedge of lemon and a timid kimchi aioli, didn’t really stand out.
The curry puffs with “candied onion” chickpea and sweet corn filling were OK too but, again, the turmeric yoghurt paste was bland and, to be honest, not quite right as a dipping sauce for the flaky fried pastry.
A yellow curry of prawns and mussels fell into the same kind of pond of indifference: the verve of strong Asian characteristics — balanced — just ain’t there.
Lowlights: A salad of green ramen, avocado and smoked salmon, sexed up with Thai flavours, is wet, bland and really ordinary — a mess.
Ditto an emasculated version of green papaya salad with ground roasted rice; not something I’d repeat at home.
Roasted cauliflower with a sesame crust, cashew cream and fried garlic chips is really just odd, and highly recommended by our waiter. The “crispy” duck just isn’t. Given it’s in a wet and pedestrian jungle curry sauce, it was probably always going to struggle.
Will I need a food dictionary?No.
The damage: Typical prices for starters $15; mains $33; and dessert $15.
In summary: Go when the head chef’s on duty, perhaps.
Address: Richmond Quarter Level 6 / 1 Silas Street, East Fremantle
(08) 9387 0888 sweetwaterbar.com.au
Open: lunch, dinner Wed-Sun
Score: 2 ½ stars