Sweetwater Tavern, Not So Sweet

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I really lament the days when there was a good food community here on HIVE. Sure, there is the Foodies Bee Hive, but I feel like a lot of that is geared towards home made food. I'm sure someone will pop in and argue differently with me, but the fact is, the days of Tasteem seem to be gone.

Make no mistake, Tasteem had their own share of issues, there was some pretty obvious abuse there, but as someone who enjoys food, it's pretty sad that food posts don't get rewarded the same way they used to. Watch, this post will hit trending and prove me totally wrong...

As I mentioned yesterday, @mrsbozz and I had an evening out in Downtown Detroit this past weekend. We met up with some friends before the Drake White concert and after giving them three options for dinner, it was decided we would meet at the Sweetwater Tavern.

Supposedly this place is a Detroit staple with a lot of history and successful enough that they now have a food truck and three other locations throughout the Detroit Metro area. The building itself dates back to the mid 1800's and while it started out as a hotel, it has become a well known restaurant and bar.

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Oddly enough, it sits right across the street from the Legends Gentlemens Club. Try as I might, I couldn't get anyone to bite on stepping inside with me. Actually, it was much too early and they weren't open anyway. I was a bit worried about how busy Sweetwater might be given the fact there was both a home Tigers baseball game and a home Pistons basketball playoff game in the city.

It turns out, my fears were unfounded. Our friends got their first and got us a table for six at the back of the bar. Unfortunately, my first impression of the Sweetwater wasn't that great. I get it is an old building, but it just had a dirty feel to it. Everything just felt kind of ick, but we were still willing to give it a shot based on the reviews we had read.

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We ordered a round of drinks and then put in our food order. Sadly, that was the last time we were asked about our drinks. It's a good thing I got a double shot of Maker's Mark bourbon, otherwise I might have been upset that I didn't get offered a second drink!

@mrsbozz got an order of onion rings with her chicken sandwich and I will admit, they were quite good, and the size of the order was quite big. She shared them with me and even then we still didn't finish them.

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Apparently, Sweetwater is widely known for their chicken wings, so being a bit of a chicken wing connoisseur, I knew I needed to check them out. Unfortunately, they left me pretty disappointed. Sweetwater doesn't offer you a selection of sauces like many places do. Instead, their claim is that they focus on one flavor and they do it the right way.

I honestly don't have a problem with that, I can appreciate a place sticking to one thing and doing it well. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case here. The wings seemed almost over-fried, and while they had a decent flavor, they definitely weren't the best wings I have ever had. I'm actually pretty keen on perfecting the ones I made myself at home a week or two ago, those were pretty dang good.

In addition to that, I wasn't impressed by the two sorry pieces of celery and the single small baby carrot they served along with the wings. It was more of an afterthought and quite honestly an insult to the rest of the lackluster dish.

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@mrsbozz got the lemon pepper seasoned chicken sandwich. The sandwich itself was good as far as I know. I mean if you have had one chicken sandwich, you pretty much know what you are going to get. My big issue here is the fact that she asked for some honey mustard on the side. The waitress said she would have to check and see if they had honey mustard.

It took us three more times asking the waitress about the honey mustard before she finally came back and let us know that they didn't have honey mustard. By that time my wife had about 3/4 of her sandwich gone anyway.

It's not like they were busy either. Yes, they did start to pick up as it got closer to 5:00 PM, but it's not like our waitress would have been spread too thin that we couldn't get decent service.

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One of the other people we were with decided to try the fish and chips which also gets pretty good reviews at this place. Once again, she ended up being disappointed. They look good in the photo, but her main issue was the fact that the fish seemed to be a little undercooked in the center. She ate around what she could, but she ended up having to leave some of it untouched. @steevc, @slobberchops, and my other friends in the UK would have likely been disappointed.

It seems whoever was running the fryer in the kitchen couldn't find the happy medium between overcooked and undercooked.

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Our other friends decided to split the wings and ribs combo. The food looked pretty good, but as you can see from their wings in the photo, they look quite a bit different from the ones I got. These inconsistencies between the two dishes speak volumes to me. The ribs smelled good and our friend commented that they were falling off the bone which depending on your BBQ experience either means they were really good or they were overcooked.

Each person has their own preference.

I will say, those same friends got a side of the collard greens and she exclaimed they were better than her moms, so that is one bit of praise for Sweetwater.

As I said before, the building is old. It is also narrow and they try to pack a lot into a relatively small space. The bathrooms were pretty nasty and that alone should have been a hint to us that this place might be one to skip.

I wish I could recommend the Sweetwater to you, but there are so many other options in Detroit that I really recommend you try those instead if you find yourself in the Motor City.

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Sports Talk Social - @bozz.sports

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All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or @mrsbozz unless otherwise sourced