Sweetings

Sweetings Review

A time-warp City seafood institution, Sweetings was established in 1889 and it powers serenely on as if the sun never set on the British Empire. There are some things Sweetings really doesn't do: dinner, reservations, coffee, or weekends. It does, mercifully, do seafood—and rather well. Not far from St. Paul's Cathedral, it's patronized by self-assured old school City gents who down pewter tankards of Black Velvet (Guinness and Champagne) and like to eat lobster salad, roe on toast, Dover sole, Cornish brill, and succulent skate wings with black butter sauce, all this at linen-covered raised counters or tables. The snooty long-serving wait staff wear whites, the oysters are plump and fresh, and desserts, like fruit crumble and baked jam roll, are old boarding school favorites.