Restaurant Review: Sweet Mel’s
August 20, 2011 Leave a comment
(Before you knock this review, I should immediately tend to the fact that this post contains info about drink specials….)I get wary of “haunted parcels” of buildings. Usually the restaurants or businesses that inhabit them show great promise, but something or some quality eventually starts to unravel and show its true colors…well either that or really some string of unfortunate events start to occur to where the revolving door of businesses is in an endless spin for only that one lot.
According to the Gainesville Sun, Sweet Mel’s current location has been inhabited by six restaurants/bars/businesses in the last “several years”. Assuming “several” to mean “seven”, six businesses in seven years = obviously will raise your eyebrows somehow. But while Sweet Mel’s may raise your eyebrows, they’ll also raise your cholesterol and your tastebud excitement.
OK, forgive my last line of lameness, but I’ll cut right to the chase: Sweet Mel’s is that good. The menu is strikingly simple, even simpler than some of the classiest restaurants in town. And yet, while Sweet Mel’s isn’t some upscale fancy-pants restaurant, it still exudes a nice, healthy amount of class in its decor and design. The restaurant’s pretty darn narrow: you only see a ridiculously long bar (we’ll get to drink specials in a bit), and then a small row of tables. You’d think it was just a bar at first, and it kind of is, not going to lie.
The difference, of course, is in the food, and this is what makes you think “well, hey, this might be a restaurant”. The Swamp Restaurant, to me, never really hails as a restaurant. Food’s ridiculously overpriced and at times just plain gross to be honest. But you’ll see at Sweet Mel’s that the people behind the menu know what they’re doing: a smattering of appetizers, a small amount of other foods to keep the non-red meat people happy, and then of course their burgers. Their most famous burger is, well, (I think) Sweet Mel’s. Why? Uhhh funnel cakes as buns. Noone at our table wanted to try it, but there were other burgers our table was more willing to try that weren’t so traditional. Two of my friends decided to get the “rise-and-shine” which was, essentially, a more improved version of Paula Deen’s crazy egg-on-top burger, although no Krispy Kreme buns 
. But it did have hashbrowns and the buns were actually french toast (no syrup though….which by the way, it begs the question: would you ever eat chicken and waffles?). Another friend of mine got The Guido burger, which was consisting of mozzarella sticks and marinara sauce. I had The Boss…which was a footlong hoagie with 1 lb (previous burgers were 1/2 a pound) of burger meat and then just normal tomato, lettuce, etc. All entrees came with a generous helping of fries. The burgers ranged from $7.99-10.99.
And all of the burgers were amazingly good. Usually, when you’re presented with specialty burgers, you find that the cooks or chefs make the toppings amazing and just make the burger plain for whatever reason, even denying it the right to simple salt and pepper that it deserves. For some reason they like to think that we’ll really forget about the big hunk of meat that’s there and enjoy the egg/hashbrowns/whatever we’re presented with. Little do they realize that we still want that meat flavor between our teeth. Sweet Mel’s did what one’s supposed to do with a burger: make it as juicy as possible, while still allowing all the other flavors to melt in your mouth.
Specialty Items
Sweet Mel’s has a “Wing Bar” from 11-3 every weekday which is essentially an all-you-can-eat buffet of wings for $8.95, a pretty good deal if you ask me (naturally if you couldn’t tell…I’ll be back…possibly). I also asked about drink specials and they said that they’re working on that right now (they JUST got their liquor license some days ago), but they’re working on doing a special called a “bladderbuster”, to which I’ve never heard of before but I’m sure all of my more college-oriented friends have. For those of you who don’t know what it is, it’s basically a variation of beat-the-clock except basically you’re trying to subdue your bladder into oblivion. You get a group of your friends, get wristbands, and hey beer’s 1 cent….until one of your friends has the bladder of a [insert animal here with horrible bladder]. Then it goes up to a quarter. Then 50 cents. Then a dollar…and that’s it. (A dollar a beer? Not too shabby). How they’ll enforce it absolutely beats me.
They also have a good smattering of desserts, although this is the only part where I feel like highway robbery was being committed. $5.99 for four fried Oreos which were good but still had the slight feeling they were frozen. The slice of Peanut Butter Pie was deemed delicious by a friend of mine…but still seemed pathetically small for a $4.99 piece of a pie (I could’ve gone to Maude’s and gotten a nice big slice of cake that was twice the size of the pie for $2.99).
Service
The service was exceptional…at first. Our server, Terrence, was amazing and welcoming. Our orders were taken promptly, but it took a little while for food to come out…and it came in two waves, which is actually more of a knock on our chef than Terrence himself. There was literally a good 15 minute delay between when one friend of mine and I got our food vs when everyone else got their food…coordination definitely needs to improve. As the night wore on, however, we saw the wait staff be stretched a little thin, and it took a good 10 minutes for us to get our cards back after giving them to Terrence; we’ll blame this on probably a cash register problem, as our receipt was literally on like an old accountant’s calculator (with cool receipt roll, obviously).
Conclusion
If you want a good unique burger that still tastes like a burger, go to Sweet Mel’s. If you like a more hipster atmosphere that gives you bigger desserts for a better price, and burgers that taste more like the stuff on top rather than the meat inside, go to the Top. Sweet Mel’s has some kinks to work out, but what new restaurant within a month doesn’t? Honestly, if they just hired one more server, the situation would probably be resolved. It’s truly a family-owned business who cares for each of their customers as if they were family; the father of the whole family came out, thanked us for coming, and enlightened us about new specials down the pipeline. That’s the hallmark of an owner and manager who cares about their customers. And as long as they keep to that, this business should do fine.
Sweet Mel’s is located at this address:
Gainesville, FL 32601
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