We've been to Il Sogno, Andrew Weissman's Italian restaurant at the Brewery, many times. We'd been to Sandbar once before, when it was next to Le Reve (back in the old days before I had this blog). We've gone to Le Reve, before it closed, and Big'z. So yeah, we're fans of Andrew Weissman and his food. And we hadn't gone to the new Sandbar location yet. And it was our anniversary, which is always a good excuse to eat excellent food.
We went early, because they don't take reservations and it's a small place. And we're old. We immediately got a table. When the hostess seated us, she told me I could put my purse on the tiny ottomans, which I recognized from Le Reve.
We started with some sashimi of the day (hamachi) and lobster bisque. I've heard great things about their lobster bisque, but they frequently run out of it, so we jumped at the chance to order it.
I got the skate wings in coconut curry sauce and jasmine rice. I love curry, so I knew I would like this. I think the red thing is a sweet potato. The fish was very crisp and buttery.
John got the wild bass with potatoes and bacon. I knew he would because it has bacon in it. I had a bite of his, and it was very good, moist and not overly fishy. Nice char on the fish too.
I'd heard that we should get the box cake, which is literally cake mix from a box. But I think they make it with sweetened condensed milk, because it tastes very moist and sweet. The icing is ganache. I don't know if you can tell, but the cake is enormous. They serve it with shots of milk. It's so big, we barely made a dent in it and had to take it home to eat for breakfast the next day.
Now, I'm going to rant a bit. Andrew Weissman does great food, but he doesn't put enough effort into marketing. I mean basic things, like a website. There's no website for Sandbar. There's supposed to be a page on the Pearl Brewery site, but nothing happens when you click on it. Il Sogno has a website listed on their matchboxes when you go there, but there is no website. Le Reve has a website, but it's not freakin open anymore. This is 2010. How can you not have a website? This is very irritating to me as a customer, when I can find many high-end restaurants on the Internet. Sure, I could go to Yelp and Urbanspoon to find the hours and whatnot, but those are not reliable sources. This just frustrates me because I know Andrew Weissman is making good food and it doesn't seem to be hurting his business to not have a website, but it makes it harder for consumers like me to talk about his restaurants since I have nothing to link to.Anyway.
It was a great dinner and we enjoyed looking at all the Alamo Heights cougars trying to emote through their Botox. We had a good time and we'll be back!
