The
SandBar
Beach Eats The Sandbar Beach Eats, located in Coligny Plaza, is a cheerful new addition to our Island paradise where the feel and flavors of the Caribbean meet Hilton Head and the sun is always shining. Come by bike or come by limousine. Arrive in your flip flops or your stilettos. There are no pretenses at The Sandbar where everybody is your friend. Just open since Memorial Day, this place boasts a good attitude along with a great location and delicious food and drinks. Don’t wait to wade your way to The Sandbar as it is sure to be your new happy place. Erika Waronsky, owner of The Sandbar, is not someone who just woke up one day and decided to open a restaurant. She has been in the business and worked for the same Coligny restaurant since arriving for a summer jaunt with her sorority sisters from West Virginia 18 years ago. She had been thinking about starting her 12
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own place for many years, so when the restaurant she worked for did not open after Hurricane Matthew, Erika was gifted the opportunity by the fates.” After the hurricane, I didn’t know what to do with myself,” she said. “The only job I have had in my entire adult life was gone.” She spent the next few months looking at a vacant location in Coligny and trying to envision the dream of owning her own restaurant coming to fruition. For Erika, it was a matter of seeing the forest through the trees. “The space was dark and brown. It was the complete opposite of what I wanted which was light and bright, clean and comfortable.” Then there was
the issue of going out on a limb with two young daughters at home. “Sometimes things just have to align and push you in the right direction even if you are a bit nervous about it. I finally thought, if you are going to do this, just Do It!”” The name and concept behind The Sandbar were born from Erika’s happy place – the May River sandbar in Bluffton. “When you go there, you are instant friends with everyone. That is what I envisioned my restaurant being,” she said. Erika added the Beach Eats to the name to connote eats from all coastal regions, Miami to Montreal, Cuba to Jamaica. To go from concept to realization of her dream took six months. She deliberated over every painstaking detail from the color scheme to style of fans. The result is nothing short of spectacular. The lower portion of the interior walls are redone