There’s a reason that restaurant reviewers are not supposed to review a place after only a single visit. Anyone can have a bad night, or day, so we are professionally, as well as morally, obliged to give a restaurant a second chance.
My first visit to Sweet Water Prime Seafood, I confess, didn’t go well, from what I would call indifferent service to my blah, overcooked chunk of Alaskan king salmon. But then I came on a busy Saturday evening, and things clicked on all cylinders. The food and the service were spot-on, and I left a convert.
From the jump, it’s clear this is an ambitious project. The restaurant has a chain feel but is a stand-alone operation, and I’m guessing that whoever came up with the concept has one eye on a franchise. You enter through a small fish market, where oysters, crab legs and pieces of fresh fish sit staring up at you from a glass case. Head to the podium, a few steps away, where charming hostesses are waiting to seat you.
The design is rather sumptuous for what is shaping up to be a family restaurant. There is a painted cement floor, tables made from dark cherry and a handsome fireplace made of stone in one of the dining rooms.
Floor-to-ceiling glass panes separate one of the rooms, which has an A-frame, ski-chalet-style design. Sit in the spacious bar, or at one of the velvet-upholstered booths that furnish it. Usually, this type of elegance is reserved for restaurants on the Strip.
If the complimentary appetizer, a frothy salmon mousse with poppy seed crackers, can’t win your favor, then perhaps one of the chowders, ladled from a separate station set up by the kitchen, will. Chef Michael’s prime clam chowder is creamy, not pasty as many Vegas chowders are, and redolent of bacon, onions and briny clams. There is even prime rib chowder, an indulgent soup. Better ask them to hold the sour cream that your server is going to ladle generously onto it.
I hesitated to order the char-grilled smoked-salmon pizza because it sounded suspiciously derivative. The smoked-salmon pizza, now part of the American food vernacular, was invented by Spago during the early ’80s. (Actually, Wolfgang Puck once told me that Robin Leach came up with the idea for it.)
I’d order this version again, but I feel duty-bound to tell you that this is a flatbread, hardly a pizza. What you get is a cracker-like base topped with lots of house-smoked salmon and the usual accoutrements: cream cheese, onions and capers. Anyway, it all tastes fine, and the fresh, wild salmon comes in other forms as well, including one made with orange peel and spicy jalapenos.
An even better starter is Trio of Crab, three types of lump Dungeness crab served with three sauces—mustard, Cajun mayo and cocktail sauce. The fried calamari also gets the same delicious Cajun mayonnaise. Otherwise, it’s a ringer for the other calamari dishes in town, a tangle of breaded tentacles.
Prime seafood steaks are done fire-roasted, pan-seared or oven-baked, and I’ve had the fresh swordfish (excellent) and the Pacific snapper (a bargain at only $14 for a nice 8-ounce filet). I wanted to try the fresh Hawaiian ono, a tuna relative. Unfortunately, on both my visits here, the fish was unavailable.
They did have sand dabs, a delicate, sole-like fish usually done, as here, with a light egg batter. The fish is fine, so I wish they would have left off the sauce, a pasty white Mornay that obscured the delicacy of the fish, and the pile of mashed potatoes, almost a foot high, which seemed like wretched suburban excess. I’ll say it again. Good products speak for themselves.
But I don’t have any complaints about the enormous seafood combination platter, huge enough to feed a small family. Items such as fried shrimp, oysters and scallops come with broiled halibut, a Bay shrimp cocktail and various side dishes, and everything on the plate is delicious. I’d also take another crack at the wild King salmon salad, nicely roasted fish on a bed of field greens laced with candied pecans and soft goat cheese.
Anytime I return here I’m going to order Our Famous Shiitake Fried Rice, a wonderful side dish, or the pancetta-wrapped asparagus. At lunch, try the pan-seared grouper topped with crab and a light Hollandaise. For dessert, try chilled tropical teasers, a trio of gelatos topped with things like mango relish or toasted pistachio nuts, or the eccentric key lime éclairs, where the custard turns out to have a citrus-infused bite.
If this turns into a chain anytime soon, don’t let me say I told you so.
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Sweet Water Prime Seafood
9460 S. Eastern Ave.
588-5400.
Open 11 a.m.-11p.m.,
Mon.-Thurs.; until midnight Fri.-Sun.
Suggested dishes: Prime clam chowder,
cup $5, bowl, $8; trio of crab, $18; seafood
combination platter, $25; Pacific red snapper steak, $14.