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Modern Asian$$
Sweetwater has one of the best views of any restaurant in Perth. It’s six storeys up above the lower reaches of the Swan River with Fremantle port views, the ocean and lots of sunlight streaming onto its veranda.
We haven’t been back for years. There was a lot of PR blather at the time of its opening about cooking that would produce flavours unlike anything in Perth, direct from places like Ginger Boy in Melbourne.
The dishes were nothing like Ginger Boy in Melbourne, just to be clear. It was OK. Well-honed flavours, mostly pretty good, but the food didn’t have the bold, brash, but perfectly calibrated intensity of Ginger Boy or Spice Temple or Chin Chin or Longrain. Not even close.
You see, you can’t just throw big ingredients together without the ability to fine-tune the riotous bombast of South East Asia’s butch flavours. That’s the secret and the art.
We revisited earlier this year to review. The chef said she had just been appointed and she needed time to get her own menu up and running. We said, “no worries” and returned two months later, last week.
The food is better, cleaner, more precise, less muddy, more pleasing… perhaps a little more like Ginger Boy.
Salt and pepper squid, chilli squid – whatever permutation of this popular fried squid dish you get, it’s all pretty much the same. How, then, would Sweetwater’s “Thai fried squid” stack up?
Better than expected. In fact, we’ve never finished a fried squid dish because as it cools it becomes less appetising by the minute. We finished the plate, even though it was cold by the time we got to the last piece. That’s saying something. The strands of chopped squid were dressed impeccably with a salty, brined chilli base and a crunchy coating. The squid was tender too.
Torched salmon tataki was, again, simple in execution and mildly flavoured with a tataki dressing. Tataki essentially means fish or meat which is cooked (torched) on the outside and raw in the middle, which is precisely what we were served. The light soy-based dressing was good too. The fish was first-class.
We hit the dumplings. These are made at the restaurant. Chicken and lemongrass was served with a soy-and-chilli dipping sauce. The dumpling filling smashed it with bold, balanced flavour. The dumpling wrappers were well steamed but still chewy and tensile. Flavour was spot-on.
Prawn and ginger dumplings were served with a punchy laksa broth, orange chilli oil and a sprinkling of Japanese togarashi condiment. You can’t get more pan-Asian than that combo. Its flavour was arresting. Delicious.
To the larger dishes and char sui pork could have meant anything in this day and age. Typically, char sui pork is the red slab of meat you see hanging on a hook at your favourite Chinese barbecue joint.
It’s often dry, despite being made from the fat-enriched collar butt. These were thick slabs of pork, still juicy and with an unmistakable char sui dressing.
Notably, the chef didn’t use red food dye to get the bright red colouring, going for a natural blend instead. The flavours of hoisin, honey, soy, five spice powder and Shaoxing rice wine were front and centre. Nice job.
The only fail was a Thai green curry with barramundi. The curry sauce had an odd flavour. It was unlike the punchy, clean flavours of a typical green curry. Rather, it was confused and unexciting.
Barramundi is not the fish for a dish like this. It requires a firm, robust white fish, which can handle the flavours and cooking in the sauce.
The barra was seared separately and simply added to the top of the curry. It may save the barra’s typically mushy flesh from disintegrating into the sauce but it’s not the best technique. I still don’t understand why it was garnished with sesame seeds. I get chefs doing their own thing – you do you – but it was an oddity.
Overall, seriously good food. The large menu also contains faves like green papaya slaw, beef massaman curry, sticky eggplant with kelp soy and a stunning masterstock-braised pork belly. There’s lots to love.
The wine list is compact but good for the offer. Cocktails tend toward the bold-coloured Asian end of the spectrum.
The service is fast and knowledgeable. Sweetwater could probably sit 200 at a time. It’s huge and this style of quick Asian is exactly what’s needed with a venue this large.
And then there are the views and the sunlight streaming in from the louvres.
If your idea is to party with 20 of your mates and graze away at Sweetwater’s terrific dishes, this might be worth a look.
14/20
Cost: snacks and small plates, $9-$25; dumplings, $17-$19; noodles and rice, $4-$28; big plates/mains, $32-$42.
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