Sweetwater: I love you with a love my own offspring surely will not even eventually experience

Last night was "truffle pig" Lang's birthday. Thankfully Lang's birthday dinner comprised the arthurian roundtable of diners, including Sarah from Riingo, Ninja, etc. We initiated the search for a perfect restaurant at Bette-- glitzy enough to feel special, not too pricy, and while it's not like the food has everyone's panties stretched around a culinary boner, at least there was some good buzz about the mac and cheese, which is a Lang fave. But my boyfriend kept insisting that it was not only quite pricy but that the food totally blew. And since Lang's party was in Williamsburg, I figured, fuck it, let's just go to my favorite place ever: Sweetwater.

Imagine, if you will, a restaurant, where the decor is homey and bar-like, rich and dark, tin-cielinged, but not dingy. A place where the cocktails are competent and brawny, where the service is the same, and where the food, item after item, is shockingly affordable, and frequently creative, interesting, and fresh. It makes no sense. It's owned by the same people as Patois, I believe, which is a dump, so I have no idea to what we can attribute the genius of this place. But I'll tell you one thing: this place is getting a bona fide thank you letter from Beans for this one, from the COPIOUS meat platter ($12, "for two" but literally for two wolves, I mean it fed a table of 6), to my utterly fresh mahi mahi, to the complimentary champagne from our WILD FANTASY of a server, we could not have been on a more solid, elated cloud 9. The check arrived, and rather than deflating the tipsy revelry, we practically threw our fists into the air and cheered, it was so low. For those of you who will take issue with missteps from the kitched, all I have to say is that while surely they happen (the smoked trout salad needed CPR) they are fewer and further between than at places less attentive and far more costly.

Sweetwater, whatever the historical moment is that has produced you, I just want to take a minute and thank it; there will be a moment, in a few years, where maybe I will go there and the kitchen will have changed, the staff rotated. I'll hear things: "Beans, I went to that place you love and it was just not the same." Maybe it'll become like Patois and start miming a French menu with Fisher Price plastic food. But right now, it's operating on all cylinders, it's at its peak, like Domingo in the 80's, and it deserves the affectionate staccato of my arterially scarred heartbeat pounding out its name whenever there's a Friday date, a best friend's birthday, or just a Sunday stroll in hipsterville.

I love that place.