The Sandbar — Restaurant in Hilton Head Island

The Sandbar is a loud and rowdy place. Not necessarily rowdy in a bad way, but definitely not a quiet spot. It's right down in the middle of town where everybody is. If you go into it knowing that and liking that kind of atmosphere, I think you'll have fun.

We went around 9:00 p.m. on the Monday before 4th of July, and there was a pretty long wait, but they also use a nice automated check-in system. You could see where you were in the line on a website, and it would call and text you when you were up. We waited about a half an hour. It's very lively and there were lots of things to look at while we waited. I was able to go to the bar and get myself a drink too.

I'd honestly recommend waiting for an outside table because the inside looks pretty plain, like an average fast casual restaurant like slapfish. But outside there's lots of action. When we got there there was a band but they were done by the time we were seated. We could still enjoy the music though while we waited.

Our waiter was nice and got to us pretty quick for drink orders and appetizers. The menu isn't extensive, and features some pretty standard bar type seafood dishes. We got oysters, fish tacos, shrimp tacos, seafood pasta, a crab cake sandwich, and a side dish of Mexican corn dip. The fish tacos were fine, pretty standard but tasty. Very large pieces of fried fish inside. The crab cake sandwich and shrimp tacos looked great. The seafood pasta looked a little boring, and I think my son was not the biggest fan. But he ate some of my tacos because I couldn't finish it and he was happy.

Honestly the star was the corn dip, don't sleep on that. It was really good. And the chips that came with my tacos were perfect for it. I also got too dark-and-stormies and they were pretty tasty.

Overall, we had a fun time in a pretty touristy spot. But we knew what we were getting into and we were in the mood for being amongst people. We got there late and it was already winding down, I can only imagine it was even more packed earlier in the night. Parking honestly wasn't that bad but we got there pretty late so maybe it started to thin out. You may have to park farther in and walk down to the edge, it really is right smack in the middle of everything. Better yet, make it the place you hit after a day at the beach when you're already parked and already down there.

If you go in knowing what to expect, you'll have...

If you don’t have good customer service, then being a server is not the right job for you. Our server made our experience so unpleasant to the point where we just got the check, packed up our food, and finished eating it back at our air bnb. He was rude, unfriendly, and had an aggressive approach when a concern was raised about my friend’s meal. My friend had asked for his Salmon BLT to be made without tomatoes and bacon. When his meal was brought out, he said there was pieces of bacon on the sandwich. He politely asked the server (in a calm tone, with a smile on his face) for another sandwich to be made without the bacon and this is where things went downhill. The server frowned up his face, crossed his arms and replied “where’s the bacon” in a very aggressive tone. My friend and I had to really bite our tongues to keep from getting aggressive and rude back. He then proceeded to argue with my friend about the sandwich. Then he finally says “if you want it remade, we can do that” That’s all he was asking for from the beginning. The server’s extremely poor attitude completely turned us off so much to the point where we were no longer that hungry anymore. My friend ended up ordering the buffalo shrimp like I had instead getting another salmon BLT. The buffalo shrimp comes with blue cheese, but his arrived to the table without it. I had to get another server’s attention for the bleu cheese. The server never came and refilled our waters or anything. Eventually, I stopped eating because the Buffalo shrimp were too hot to eat without water. We requested the check and to go boxes and left. The food was good, but based on the customer service, I would not recommend. We’re from out of town and decided to try this restaurant because it was right around the corner from where we were staying. When we return to Hilton Head for vacation, we will be sure not to...

We've come here every year for the past few years for HH and always enjoyed our time at the bar and the live music :)

However this year we sat at a table instead of the bar, and had.... lackluster service. The place was alive, but not packed, but our service was very slow. We moved from bar to table and didn't receive any utensils until after the entrees had arrived... and we had to go up and ask for them after asking our server twice. Only got one water refill (sitting in the sun, pretty hot, so we drank all of it). He didn't run any of our food, and didn't check on us once we got it except after apps to take our entree orders.

On to the food... we started at the bar and got great margs on happy hour. For starters we got the pretzel and beer cheese, and the street style corn dip. Both were very hot (since we ate with our hands), and good for the price. Chips for the dip were just okay. For entrees we got the oysters sandfeller, which were spectacular as always. Then we tried to share the seafood pasta and seafood salad. The pasta had shrimp and scallops and white wine sauce with spinach and linguine noodles, but totally lacked any flavor unfortunately. The salad was okay, Bleu cheese dressing was good, but the crab was definitely canned with the standard metallic flavor, and parts of the lettuce was wilty and bruised. Shrimp on both was overcooked and tough without much flavor. Again, unfortunately, we couldn't tell our server this until he came around later to see if we were ready for the check. He did end up taking the pasta off and giving us a discount on the rest which was nice, but could've been fixed sooner.

Again, service and food years past has been wonderful, but we were disappointed with it this time. If we come back we'll definitely be sitting at the bar for...