Spectator's Lounge

For a hotel bar, it's not bad. If Spectator's Lounge was a "real" bar somewhere it would probably only get 2 stars from me, but it's decent for what it is, hence the additional star.

We stayed at the Hyatt over Labor Day weekend, since it's within stumbling distance of the Irish Fest, and I ended up having drinks in Spectator's all 3 nights. The first two nights some of the Fest musicians were having a traditional Irish music seisun, so that was cool. Also, the drinks were pretty reasonably priced for a hotel bar, and the bartenders served them quickly, even though it was really crowded, so no complaints there. Honestly, the drink prices are what earned Spectator's the third star, because I'm used to having to pay an exorbitant amount to drink at a hotel bar. The prices here were almost comparable to "normal" bars, which was a pleasant surprise. I do have to say, I liked the brass elephant heads decorating the bar itself, but other than that, the decor was pretty much "upscale sports bar", which is alright but nothing terribly special.

What I did NOT like was not only did the bar close ridiculously early on Sunday (Midnight? On a holiday weekend when there was a festival going on?? Seriously??!!!), but the bartender also didn't mention it was last call when my dad and I ordered our drinks. So then when we overheard him telling someone else that they couldn't get a refill, we had to decide if we wanted to try to get an extra drink quickly, or what we were going to do once the bar closed. I saw a lot of folks get turned away who were there ready to drink, and it was just dumb. I mean, stay open later, or post your hours, or SOMETHING, because being shut down at midnight when you're ready to chill for a bit with a drink is irritating. And hello, you lost a LOT of business that night, Spectator's.

So...yeah. Undoubtedly I'll be back next year when Irish Fest rolls back around, but other than that, this isn't on my list of bars to frequent. And at least I know now that they'll close stupidly early on Sunday so that I can plan my night well in advance.

They had a house cabernet plus a Rodney Strong, so that's great in my book. On a weeknight it was quiet and laid back, which is a good end to the day. The service was good, and they had several TVs.

I was recently visiting Kansas City for the Hospital Hill Half Marathon. After my friends and I picked up our packets in the crown center, we were anxious to have our pre-race dinner. Hungry runners we were!

We stopped by the Spectator lounge to see what they had. We walked in (there were about 7 of us) and after no one greeted us, we figured we had to seat ourselves; we sat at a large high top table.

The place wasn't super crowded at all, so it's not like we could have gone unnoticed. But no one came to greet us or even acknowledged our presence. We grabbed a few menus from the bar.

Wow. Hello, smallest menu ever! There were about 5 things to choose from, no lie. I don't know how this place can even bill itself as a restaurant.

That paired with the fact that we were completely ignored made it easy to walk out of this place in search of a better option.