The point of async/await is to enable asynchronous code to participate in the same patterns synchronous code does, instead of being coerced into a promise-style

The point of async/await is to enable asynchronous code to participate in the same patterns synchronous code does, instead of being coerced into a promise-style interface. Using try/catch is part of that, and it's good practice here. If you're not going to take advantage of it, why bother with async/await at all, especially when using it at top level requires a workaround anyway?