Sands Bistro on the Beach

The redeeming factor of this hotel restaurant is its location. The food was average and service was a complete lack of care for its customers. Perhaps we had a bad waitress or she was having a bad day, but it shouldn’t have taken 10 minutes after our food showed up to get enough silverware for 4 people. Oh, btw, no choice in the amount of tip… it’s 18% whether you eat with utensils or not!

The service here is awful. Waited 10 minutes for someone to come to our table. Waited another 5 for silverware which meant the food was cold when we finally ate. 18% gratuity automatically added so there is no incentive for the servers to actually, well, serve. The food is actually decent, it’s too bad the waitstaff is so poorly trained and so inattentive.

Excellent meal! I chose the chef special Ahi Tuna Tacos which were superb. My wife had the ribeye which she enjoyed as well. Very nice waiter and good selection of beer and mixed drinks.

Service is excellent and very friendly. Everything clean and neat. Breakfast was excellent and more than I could eat. Lunch salad was perfect size, fresh!

Full bar and good food attached to Wyndham Garden hotel. Only had breakfast and lunch here, so far no complaints. Bartenders have been very friendly and attentive. Salads were very fresh and my over easy eggs were cooking to perfection… tasty shredded hash browns too! Beef nachos were loaded with lots of fresh veggies, cheese and crisp multicolored chips. They serve Starbucks coffee if that’s your thing or if you prefer a lighter brew (like myself) their house blend hit the spot. Got a whole nother full day of food, drinks and sun… looking forward to it!

I am only writing this because I don’t think this place deserves only 2 stars. We stayed at the Whyndam weds thru saturday and we had lunch there every day. Burger was my favorite with the pineapple and bacon. I also had the shrimp tacos which were nice. The only thing is that its little expensive but compare to the other places prices seemed normal. I just wasn’t impressed with their breakfast but other than that lunch was pretty good (so much better than any other place)

The service was pretty good, the mahi mahi sandwich & grouper sandwich were both a big disappointment & overpriced. Then an 18% gratuity was automatically added to our bill for just 2 people. I would not recommend this place to anyone.

Love the hotel it is nice and quiet… But, that being said I won’t eat at this restaraunt again, even staying in this hotel. The seafood was below average at best but charged a mid to high price. I got better seafood at chain restaraunts in the mid west… Out of season, seriously! The service was really nothing to write home about: over ten minutes before we were talked to, with only 1 other table occupied with at least 3 servers, another 10 – 15 minutes for drinks another 10 – 15 minutes to take order, see a pattern here. All the while there was never more than three tables there!!! Then the gratuity is ran in the bill so of course you can’t tip accordingly. Trust me I’m not cheap, I usually tip very well, but this was exceptionally bad service. Don’t go here. You’re better off at long john silvers (which I hate)

Overall my boyfriend and i were pleasantly surprised by our meal. We ordered from sands beach bar and grill. We are staying at wyndham garden at clear water beach for our 6 year anniversary and didnt feel like walking around trying to find something to eat. We ordered over the rooms phone and we got our food delivered in about 20 min. My boyfriend got a salad, fettuccine alredo and french fries. He enjoyed everything. I got grouper tacos and fries. I liked everything, i wish the grouper would have had a bit more seasoning and i would have liked regular salsa compared to the mango salsa served. But the mangos in the salsa were yummy. We split mozzarrella sticks and flourless chocolate cake. The mozzarrella sticks were my favorite part of the meal. The cake was really good, it reminded me of a chocolate mousse. Overall very good meal and we are stuffed and happy on our anniversary.

We visited Sands Beach Bar and Grill (hereinafter Sandbag) on a late July Sunday at 9:30 A.M. as part of an ongoing project to catalog every beachfront venue offering outdoor breakfasts in the Tampa Bay Area. Possibly, we have bitten off more than we can chew, but this goal elevates our dining above mere gluttony and lends purpose and dignity to our otherwise meaningless suburban lives.
Sandbag is part of the Wyndham Garden Clearwater Beach Hotel and offers, at least when we visited, free parking without the fuss of valets or validation which is hardly a given on the beach. You enter the patio by passing to the left of the registration desk and a nice-​looking captive Starbucks and walking across the totally undistinguished interior portion of the restaurant. There is a roofed area with perhaps five tables and a larger outdoor section with fifteen or twenty tables, most or all of which had open umbrellas bearing Moët & Chandon logos. The umbrellas were quite nice and looked high tech enough to be German, but turned out to be from Istanbul. The ribs were raised by a rope that was wound through a complicated set of pulleys which appeared to offer a significant mechanical advantage. If you’re wondering why I know so much about the umbrellas, let’s just say that I had time on my hands.
Sandbag opens onto a small beach which temporarily disturbs the otherwise continuous breakwater which fronts the pass between Clearwater Beach and Sand Key. The patio and beach offer a good view of the boat traffic through the pass and the high bridge that crosses it. Just don’t expect any wave action.
Upon being seated, make sure that you face the water and never look away from it. The charm of the water, boats, bathers and occasional dolphins far surpasses that of the totally anonymous buildings behind you which perhaps have enough sense not to compete.
All the waiters that we saw were young men, not in uniform but uniformly glib. Perhaps twenty percent of the tables were occupied, so the waiters had a lot of time to chat together, which irritated me. I guess that I’m solipsistic enough to want to feel that I have their attention, even if it’s an illusion. It may be that since most of their patrons are transients, the waitrons don’t want to invest a lot of effort in cordiality. They are certainly competent.
When we asked for coffee, we were served a carafe, decent enough to have been brewed at the adjoining Starbucks. The cups were small, about the size of a Quattro espresso, if there exists such a thing. This worked out great, since the volume was small enough to stay warm, and readily refilled from the carafe at hand.
The rest of the meal was of no particular distinction. My partner got a Sausage Benedict, which was sort of like a conflation of Eggs Benedict, biscuits and gravy, and a sausage McMuffin. There were two biscuit halves, each topped by a round slice of bland sausage, gravy, and a nicely poached egg. Given the choice between home fries and fruit, pard chose fruit. I chose home fries to go with my corned beef hash, poached eggs and marbled rye bread which was not distinguishable from the Pepperidge Farm stuff available at most supermarkets. I didn’t ask the provenance of the corned beef hash, but I have had better out of a can. The home fries almost certainly were frozen, and arrived warmish and devoid of any seasoning except salt. Anticipating this, I had asked the waiter for ketchup and hot sauce. He rapidly returned with Tabasco and a generic ketchup, in a squeeze bottle that still had its seal. Having just read an article about how unhealthy even touching restaurant ketchup containers can be (you don’t want to know), I was delighted.
My partner and I shared our dishes. Immediately upon returning home, we both required Immodium. Who knows what caused our brief period of distress? If it was in fact associated with the restaurant, I suspect that it was the richness of the foods we chose to order rather than a sanitation issue.
Well return again, bot not until we’ve completed our circuit.