Our mini critic club was back together this Friday for dinner at Il Sogno.  We’ve been once for lunch, and I thought my margarita pizza tasted like Chef Boyardee boxed pizza.. but, everyone raves about this place, so we went back.  I was hopeful when we walked in as it was so bustling and filled with yuppies.  But, hours later, as we cast our votes… it became clear: Il Sogno is overrated.

First, we wanted to order some wine — red for our friends and white for us.  We were told the sommelier would be right over.  I guess that meant he would be right over after every other table in the place.  We finally got two bottles of wine after about 20 minutes and I guess it was worth the wait, we enjoyed both wines.  A nice glass of wine always puts me in a more pleasant mindset, so my annoyance at the wine wait was put behind me.

sweet breads

We chose appetizers, but the waiter said he couldn’t put in the appetizer order until we decided on mains because if he did, our main ticket would get shuffled about and it would take like an hour and a half to get the entrees out.   So, we all rushed to make a dinner decision.  We started with two salads, the soft shell crab appetizer, and the sweet breads.  I am not much of a thymus/pancreas eater, so I stayed away from the sweetbreads, however J and our other dining companion M2 thoroughly enjoyed it.  The soft-shell crab and shrimp was also good.  But, the star of the appetizer round was the salad… a delicious salad with blue cheese, avocado and fresh greens.

best plate of the night

After that, we waited and waited.  My wine glass went dry… I had to flag down our waiter (he took our bottle somewhere for chilling).  Thankfully, we hadn’t seen each other in a long time, so our group had plenty to talk about.  The table beside us, seated around the same time, finished dessert and left.  The table to our right was eating some delicious cannoli.  We twiddled our thumbs… and then ordered a third bottle of wine.  As we ordered our wine, the waiter sensed our restlessness and told us the food would be out soon.  J made a joke about we ordered apps and entrees at the same time, but it had still been an hour and a half.  Ha!

all smiles before the storm

Shortly thereafter, dinner arrived.  Woohoo!  I had the pan seared red fish and it was definitely pretty yummy.  J had the pulled pork special which was served with some sort of cheesy grits and a fried egg on top.  We agreed that the pork was pretty dry and tasteless.  Our dining companion M1 had the handkerchief pasta with wild boar which he said was bland (he also requested to amend his food rating to a zero due to the ongoing tummy problems he’s experienced since).  His lovely wife M2 had the duck which she raved about.  By the time we finished, the place was starting to look pretty empty, but what would a review be without dessert?  We ordered the panna cotta, but if you’ve ever had Dough’s panna cotta, you will not be impressed.

I think we are done with Il Sogno.  We’d much rather go to Andrew Weissman’s nearby – and delicious – restaurant, the Sandbar.

Our rating:

We also decided to begin assigning a “value” score.  Value is defined as “what you got was worth what you paid,” with 10 being excellent and 0 being not at ALL worth it.  Our average score for Il Sogno was 3.8.

Il Sogno Osteria
200 East Grayson #100
San Antonio, TX 78215
(210) 223-3900