Sweetwater Oyster Bar — Restaurant in Cedar Park

Another great meal at Sweetwater tonight, managed by Zach, our bartender/waiter! Service always great! Tonight no gulf oysters so we opted for a medley of east coast varieties... all were super good! (Sorry, forgot a pic! :-( ). The Ocean 11 martinis again a home run. Food plates included the sashimi tower, halibut florentine and grilled Greek octopus. Watch the prep! So delicious, across the board! No dessert this time. Continue to highly recommend Sweetwater Oyster Bar!

Another outstanding meal/service at Sweetwater Oyster Bar this week! At the risk of sounding like a broken record... we sat at the bar, Zach was our bartender/waiter, great job as always, and we started with a dozen gulf oysters. For starters on beverages this time, we opted for the Oceans 11 martini and the Midori Spritz. Both were awesome, and really fun to look at! A Hugo followed in the second round of drinks, also very good as well. Ingredients can be found in the attached photos.

Our food selections included two new dishes for us... the Tuna Tostada and the grilled Branzino filet. The tuna tostado was served as a ball-shaped tortilla shell filled with tuna and all the other stuff. Looked cool and tasted even better. The branzino was perfectly grilled, laid atop a carrot ginger puree, sided by saffron curry couscous, and topped with two, large grilled gulf shrimp. The entire dish was a kaleidoscope of colors and flavors... delectable! No dessert this time. Highly recommend Sweetwater Oyster Bar for your dining pleasure!

Update April 2024

We stopped by Sweetwater on a Saturday evening during the dinner hour, and the place was packed! We started with a French 75 and an Almond Joy martini... but were great, and paired well with a dozen of gulf oysters which were shucked well, and served ice cold!

The sashimi tower is a heavenly combination of tuna, salmon, white fish, avocado, onions, tobiko caviar, salmon roe and sweet ginger ponzu. The dish is made by layering the ingredients in a round form so the dish literally comes out looking like a tower! Delicious! The fruits de mar linguini was equally good. Clams, mussels, shrimp, lobster all simmered in a fantastic garlic cream sauce, and the pasta was cooked a perfect al dente. We would definitely order both dishes again!

Another 5-star meal enjoyed at Sweetwater. Highly recommend this place if you're in the area. Even if you're not in the area, it's worth the trip!

Updated Review 02-25-2024

We really wanted some oysters tonight, Sweetwater Oyster Bar it was. Zach was our bartender/waiter again and remembered us from last time. Zach provided excellent service again, start to finish. Thanks Zach!

We started this evening with a couple of Last Word cocktails, a fun combination of gin, chartreuse, maraschino liquor and lemon juice... Delicious!

First course, of course, was oysters. One dozen super-plump, juicy and briny gulf oyster, served ice cold, on ice. Awesome oysters. We ordered from the Crudo section of the menu, the Nama No Sakana. Not sure what that means in Japanese, but at Sweetwater, it means 5 different sashimi on a plate. Definitely a dish worth having! We finished up with another "new to us" dish, the Mediterranean Branzino. A well thought out and presented dish. Highly recommend Sweetwater!

Updated Review 02-04-2024

Stopped by Sweetwater Oyster Bar to give it another whirl... last visit (which was our first) was in May 2023. Tremendous improvement since the last visit. Bombay Sapphire martinis were the drink of choice, tasted great!

Our first plates were the ceviche and hamachi crudo. Both dishes were outstanding. Next up was a dozen gulf oysters, served ice-cold, and they were HUGE! At $2 each, a real bargain... We choose the burrata salad. It did not disappoint!

We finished up the day with the scallop special, Moroccan scallops. The scallops were expertly prepared, tasty great. Cauliflower, carrots and couscous on the side, delicious.

We'll be back. Highly recommend Sweetwater Oyster...

I really wanted to like this place. It's one of the cooler vibes in local restaurants. However, it was unfortunately a poor service experience.

I requested reservations online and they were confirmed for 7p on a Friday evening. My wife and I took my oldest son and his girlfriend out for a nice meal.

When we got there, the hostess could not find our reservation but sat us anyways.

The place was packed (a little on the crowded side) and extremely loud, between the music that was probably a good 10 decibels higher than it needed to be. This caused us and others around us to have to raise our voices to carry a conversation. Almost on the annoying side.

My son was surprised that the silverware was not on a napkin but directly touching the table.

Water was brought out and we ordered a couple of appetizers and our drinks within the first 10 minutes. Well, we believe they were appetizers as they were in the "shareables" section. Though, there is also a "small plates" section of the menu. They came out about 10 minutes later.

As the appetizers came out, another waiter asked if we needed anything and we placed our entrée order with him. He wrote it down in a notepad.

The original waiter came back by and asked if we were ready to order and we let him know we had placed it with the other waiter.

About 45 minutes later, we decided to ask when our food would be coming out. We were told it would be out shortly.

About 15 minutes later, we stopped another waiter to ask him to check on the order. He did and came back to let us know that the order had been submitted 24 minutes prior. An hour had gone by at that point. So, I asked him to go ahead and cancel the order and bring us our bill for the drinks and appetizers. He assured me it would be out within 6-7 minutes.

15 minutes later, I had to walk back over to where the wait staff were gathered to let them know we had waited long enough and to please bring us our bill. He apologized and said he would be right back with us. He came back to the table and apologized and said the GM would comp the appetizers and drinks. We were appreciative of the gesture, but it didn't necessarily improve the experience. I think it would have been better received if the GM came by, personally, to apologize.

I wouldn't say the place is understaffed at all. There issue is really a lack of sound systems and processes. It seems they take an approach of every waiter serves every table. While it might make sense as an idea, there seemed to be a lack of accountability on behalf of the waiter that forgot to put in our order. He never once came back to our table.

The waitstaff are extremely friendly and accommodating, but our first and probably only experience at Sweetwater was bad enough to make me feel compelled to write this review.

In terms of food, I can only comment on our appetizers - brussels sprouts, calamari, lobster ravioli and shrimp. The brussels sprouts were good not great. The calamari was good. The lobster ravioli was plain. The shrimp was surprisingly small.

Ultimately, I hope they fix their issues as more of this type of restaurant are...

Extremely slow service and bland flavors!

Went there at 3:40pm and had not much.. We ordered, Chorizo oysters, crab stuffed mushrooms a dozen oysters and truffle Fries to Go and had 2 arnold palmers.

Drinks - Arnold Palmers came in first quickly. Looked good, tasted horribly bad. Extremely sour lemonade and tasted super artificial. This was the first time i've ever sent back an Arnold Palmer because it was not consumable. I had to wait a long time to send this back because our server was just running around tables and it took some time for him to come to us.

The Mushroom with stuffed crab came in right after and it was Good. Even the crab tasted good.

Mussels - Was super excited to taste the mussels and it was a mess the moment we tasted it, the whole item was too salty to even do a taste test.. The Chef probably didn't even realize the Chorizo has salt, i wonder how they've been serving it all along. Anyways had to wait like 10+ minutes before i could track and call for our server and it took them another 15 minutes to get us the order re-made. This time it was edible but had almost no great flavor. The mussels also tasted a bit old.

After about 15+ minutes we asked when would our Oysters come in, that's when our server realized he might've forgotten to get that into the system. . .We saw atleast 3 parties who came atleast 15 + minutes after us had all gotten their Oyster plates... There were not more than 6 tables with people and about 6 or so in the bar.. It was not busy at 4pm. After about another 15 minutes we received our Oysters and they were great!!!

Fries - The truffle fries were a ToGo order and i noticed they were actually wedges and not fries which was not the problem. I looked at the quantity and it was 10 pieces of potatoes and i had no idea of what and where the truffle was. At this point we were actually not sure why this place is so highly rated and raved...

Even the folks in our table nearby were talking how bad their food was and we told ourselves this would be first and last for this place.

This is what we noticed. Poor process and service to take and send orders Food taste and quantity was sub par Great ambience...