Hawgs is situated next to the San Jose theatre and is a convenient short walk down the Paseo de San Antonio from the Fairmont. It is decorated in faux-industrial chic with exposed pipes and false half-plastered brickwork, but thankfully the décor has little bearing on the food. It also has some genuine bar-style seating, part of which overlooks the kitchen so if you are keen to see your food being prepared you can.
As the name suggests, the menu is almost entirely fish. You can have steak if you want, but why would you when there is so much good seafood on offer? For appetizers Kevin had crab cakes (the day's special) and I had baked oysters asiago. I think I got the better deal. The crab cakes were full of tasty crab, and came with a nice salad, but there were only two crab cakes and rather more salad than crab. As Kevin doesn't east anything green he wasn't best pleased. The oysters, however, were excellent. So was the spinach and cheese crust that came with them.
For main course Kevin had king prawns with pasta in a garlic sauce and I had Hawg's signature dish, the paella Valencia. Both meals came to us hot off the grill and needed to cool down a little before we could eat them. Both were also well made, if not spectacular, and were provided in large quantities. Neither of us could finish our meals, and consequently we had no room to even think about dessert. I have had better paella in Spanish restaurants, but then I would expect to. Hawgs did a thoroughly competent job with a lot of shellfish, which is hard stuff to cook well.
Another plus point for the restaurant is that they are open late. American restaurants have a habit of closing around 10:00pm, even on a Saturday night. Hawgs was still admitting new diners at 10:00pm, and there was no closing time posted on the door.