Pop-Up Sandoitchi and Midnight Rambler Cuddle-Up on Valentine's Day Weekend

Valentine’s weekend is the time to impress. That’s when you have the bring out the big guns: roses, chocolates and wagyu tartare. With the goal of impressing your date, Midnight Rambler and Japanese sando pop-up Sandoitchi are teaming up for a special dinner.

The viral and much-beloved, nomadic sando shop Sandoitchi is setting up shop for a two-night dining event at Midnight Rambler, the subterranean cocktail bar at The Joule. The collaboration will offer a five-course tasting menu with cocktail pairings on Friday, Feb. 11, and Saturday, Feb. 12.

Usually, Sandoitchi is a takeout operation when it pops into town, but for Valentine’s it’s a fully fleshed-out sit-down dinner. Titled “YES/NO/MAYBE,” calling back to a time where’d you anxiously await an answer back from your crush, chef Stevie Nguyen’s menu will include wagyu tartare sando, silken tofu, wagyu katsu sando, wagyu don, and a strawberry cream sando.
The menu is accompanied by a seven-part cocktail flight curated by Gabe Sanchez, Midnight Rambler’s award-winning cocktail expert.

“We wanted to go all out for the cocktail menu. I mean, it’s Valentine’s weekend so it’s time to impress, right?” says Sanchez in a press release. “The cocktails are Japanese inspired, but through an inventive lens that incorporates ingredients like truffle butter-washed whisky and matcha syrup. The pairings travel from that first rush of meeting someone through a rocky breakup and bouncing back.”

For those unfamiliar, Sandoitchi is a Dallas-based experimental pop-up shop that first launched in February 2020, inspired by sandos, the sandwiches found at Japanese convenience stores called Konbini. Sandoitchi’s partners-in-love, Midnight Rambler reopened after a pandemic nap in 2021 with Sanchez onboard and have been on a hot streak of pop-up collabs lately, most recently having worked with RainbowCat.

The tasting menu for Valentine’s dinner is $125 per person with an optional $75 cocktail pairing. Reservations open Sunday, Feb 6 at 6 p.m. on Midnight Rambler’s website. If it’s too late to grab a seat at the table, a la carte options and wagyu sandos will be available both nights starting at 9 p.m.