14 | July | 2008 | Food City Bytes

We made it to Sweetwater Tavern for brunch this past Sunday after a couple missteps and an accidental side trip to Ikea, Red Hook. I’ve been wanting to go to Sweetwater since I read about it over a year ago. Initially, we thought it’d be closer to the Diner on E. Broadway than it turned out to be.

Sweetwater has: an outdoor area, plethora of hipsters milling over morning drinks and discussing their new ongoing band gigs, and lot of good food on the menu. Here’s the raspberry scone:

IMG_0579, originally uploaded by Brockenbrough Photos.

The old faux fine china plates were a nice touch.

It was very dry (this is good) except for the top layer where the raspberries were and then the brown sugar on top. It was unclear whether they were mad ein house or delivered earlier in the morning. Aong with the other treats (they were out of the croissonts – chocolate filled and otherwise $1 ea. by the time we arrived – c. 2:45pm), they were up front under a bell jar.

Condiments and completeness were out the window: scone arrived but without butter or jam; coffee arrived but without sugar, milk or a spoon and then it only arrived after a coke(?) that no one ordered arrived first and an order of “iced coffee” (that no one ordered) was cancelled. At the end, $3 was charged instead of $2 for the coffee althogh the waitress assured us that regular coffee was $3. It wasn’t; cafe, espresso, latte… those were $3 as presumeably the iced coffee would have been.

Here’s the eggs benedict with Salmon, home fries and salad that I ordered:

IMG_0585, originally uploaded by Brockenbrough Photos.

Surprisingly, there were fried tomatoes under the salmon (which was delicious). The english muffins were an interesting brand too but unfortunately, were a little tough. The eggs too… were not poached so much as actually just completely cooked through. The hollandaise sauce was a win though.

Aimee got the Eggs Supreme which is two poached eggs and ham on grilled bread with avocado and smoked tomato salsa. Aimee said that grilled bread was a nice touch and added flavor but the eggs again weren’t really poached so much as totally cooked through. She said it tasted fine in spite of that and they really did put in a lot of tasty avocado under that piece of lettuce.

IMG_0587, originally uploaded by Brockenbrough Photos.

Here’s the side view where you can see the avocado poking out. The theory on the eggs is that the wait staff seemed all a little flustered and kept buzzing at one another about how electricity was not working well in certain sections. However, the lights, espresso maker, music etc. were all on and fully functioning up where we were in the front of the restaurant.

IMG_0588, originally uploaded by Brockenbrough Photos.

IMG_0584, originally uploaded by Brockenbrough Photos.

The ambience in Sweetwater really is nice… there is still the early 20th century tile flooring (highlight as the wallpaper on their website), a long wooden bar, decorations of old rustic equipment and photographs. There were also a number of people, who knew the owner, speaking in Italian.

Plus, added bonus…. on the walk over there, we saw this guy: