Bivaro

Off campus cuisine: Sweetheart Cafe

Sweetheart Café sings a sour note

By Jacey Gibb, Opinions Editor

Does cafeteria food fail to cater to your
taste buds? Not digging the Dougout?
Then grab your finest bib and try to
avoid drooling on the person next

to you, because we’re here to offer
salvation for you students looking to
humble your hunger, without having to
wear your shoes out getting there.

ne of my favourite episodes

of Seinfeld would have to be

“The Cafe,” due mostly to the
plot involving a restaurant called The
Dream Café, a place that tries to please
everyone by offering almost every kind
of cultural cuisine you can think of.
The problem with this kind of a mission
statement is that by attempting to -
please everyone, you end up satisfying
almost no one. I hate to compare the
two, but Sweetheart Café on Columbia
Street suffers from the same syndrome.

The sounds of Supertramp seeped

out the ajar door of Sweetheart when
I ducked inside for the first time ever.
The setup is painfully similar to every

16

 

dive diner you’ ve ever been to, down
to the black and white checkerboard
flooring and the classic rock radio
station playing in the kitchen. Across
the room is where you order your meal,
with several menus posted behind the
counter and running alongside it too.
That’s right—several menus. One has
a complete list of breakfasts available,
one has the various burgers and teriyaki
bowls offered, and another menu has a
library of different sushi you can order.
The experience was overwhelming at
first, digesting information and trying
to decide what would act as the best
representative for what was being
offered. I eventually settled on the
pineapple (!) cheeseburger with fries
and a pairing of unagi and cucumber
rolls.

Before sitting down to my meal,
I took a detour to the bathroom and
couldn’t help but notice the subpar
cleanliness of it. The state of a
restaurant’s bathroom can usually be an
indirect representation of how seriously
the establishment takes food safety, but
for the sake of my article’s deadline, I
decided I would stick around and see

      

how the actual meal.went.

By the time I came back from the
bathroom, a charming pot was waiting
for me at my table, with tea that was
amazingly weak, even for a sushi
place. The burger followed suit at an
unsettlingly fast pace, causing me to
wonder if the burger hadn’t already
been precooked or something. My fries
were overly crispy and had obviously
been cooked prior, then simply tossed
back into the deep fryer, but the burger
was the real shocker of the meal.

It was amazing! I can’t remember
the last time a burger was that juicy
and full of flavour. My initial hesitation
towards the addition of pineapple
seemed justified, as the sweetness
conflicted with everything else on the
patty, but a simple removal of the fruit
brought the burger to an optimal level,
completely distracting me from the
terrible tatters accompanying it.

By the time the sushi arrived, I had
inhaled the burger and was playfully
pushing the hardened fries around
on my plate with disinterest. The
presentation on the rolls was great, but
my stomach was having a difficult time

   

finding room to accommodate further
guests. Luckily, but unfortunately, the
sushi encore was very disappointing —
with the cucumber rolls lacking any
flavour and the unagi being no more
than mush in a roll. After two of each, I
got the rest to go, but later threw them
out anyways.

I was in disbelief when the woman
working—she seemed to be the only
employee at the time, handling the
monies and cooking the meal, informed
me that the restaurant had been there
for 10 years. I remained the only
customer in the place for my entire visit
and I have never heard anyone even
speak of the place, neither positively or
negatively. This isn’t to say Sweetheart
Café is a total writeoff, but it could
sure use an overhaul. Narrow the
focus of the food to only a handful of
dishes, heavily promote the heavenly
hamburgers, and maybe put more
effort into portraying a more sanitary
establishment, preferably one that
doesn’t have bugs in the bathroom and
used mop buckets lying about.