Spectator’s Lounge

Food was pretty good. I had the KC strip and spinach dip. Margaritas were strong but where made with cheap tequila.
We had the same place for room service a few days later, did not disappoint.

Ate here last night, it’s the restaurant in the Sheraton. Ordered the short rib entrée and a side goat cheese salad.
Goat cheese salad was ok. The goat cheese was a deep fried medallion. Kinda wish it was just crumbled.
Short rib plate was decent. Not very big portion of meat but was tasty. Mashed potatoes were pretty good. Veggies were ok too.

Not great. Sunday lunch we were one of 3 tables. No one to great us at the hostess stand so we came in and someone at the bar yelled for us to sit wherever. After that service was ok but for a Boulevard inspired restaurant, 4 of their Boulevard taps were out including pale ale and their specialty/​seasonal beers.
We had the pretzel bites with fondue sauce to start. Very good. Then a cheeseburger requested medium, it came well done. Friend had the flatbread. It was terrible. Limp and over sauced. Asked for mustard and they brought me a handful of to go mustard packets. Not cool! Who wants to open a bunch of these up in a restaurant.
This place in upstairs in the Sheraton hotel. Hard to find and not a place a local will seek out.

I was in Kansas City for training and stayed at the Sheraton. The Spectator is a restaurant in the hotel, it’s really relaxed and a sports type atmosphere. There are tv’s all around but it also has a upscale feel also. I ordered wings w/​the Asian glaze on the side and fries, the portions are a nice size for the price. I also ordered a Long Island Iced Tea, the price was good but could’ve been a little stronger. I would go back.

A little over priced for the quality of food but about what you would expect at a hotel restaurant /​bar. On the plus side they have 5 or 6 tv’s with various sports on.

This is the only restaurant in the «new» Sheraton. You would think a convention hotel would have multiple options but this sub-​par «gastro-​pub» (sports bar). Is small understaffed and food is average at best. Much room for improvement from the Hyatt.

For a hotel bar, the food and prices aren’t terrible. Service wasn’t the best or the fastest. The first time I had an order or pretzel bites with were awful! The next day we just had the buttercake dessert which was delicious yet service was still a little strange.

Worst service ever… this place sucks. The lady dropping off my food said nothing other than oooooo shit, that was after the 45 minute wait for it. The bartender is the biggest asshat on the planet. Rude and stupid combined. Either this staff is brand new or the are nothing but a bunch of inbred retards that should never be in customer service.

Majorly overpriced with not so good service. We had a party of 8 and had to sit at two different tables because there simply isn’t a table big enough for a party of 8. We then had 2 different servers and half of our party didn’t get their order taken until the other half already had their food.
Speaking of the food… I ordered the whole wedge salad and received what amounted to literally six bites of salad with a small piece of bacon, a tiny sliver of hard boiled egg and a squirt of blue cheese dressing. This all came to over $ 13. I can’t imagine how small the half wedge salad could have been! Needless to say, I was hunger about 30 minutes later. Should have just braved the cold and walked across the street to Panera.

Service was good. Selection of food at the breakfast buffet was not worth $ 14. I would have just ordered off a menu, but that is not a option. Pancakes were decent. Bacon tasted like liquid smoke, very unappetizing. Would not eat again.

Party of nine on NYE. The waitress took our drink order for a bottle of champagne, a bottle of wine, and two beers, then must have gotten sucked into that black hole others have mentioned. Thirty minutes later we were still waiting for our drinks, and still didn’t have water! I went to the bar twice. The first time I brought the two beers back to our table myself, the second time (add another ten minutes) the bartender helped me carry the 18 glasses and two bottles back to our table. Add another ten minutes, I went to the service area myself to get water, which I hated doing. Our waitress passed me as I was coming out, but made no effort to take over serving the water and didn’t apologize. She just went on with what she was doing.
Our food took an hour and a half and was served in no particular order – for some of us the entrée was served first and the soup/​salad last. We were served by about four different people, some were clearly trying to make things right and more on top of it than others. All were friendly. The waitress that took our orders initially was rarely seen, and she never apologized. The food was fine – not impressive but not bad.
Our service was so bad, a fact that at least four servers and the bartender were witness to, that I was pretty shocked to see the bill presented with no comps. I fully expected a manager to emerge at some point to apologize for the debacle and say it’s on the house. Instead, I had to go ask for the manager. He also was friendly, but took the bill and said «Let me see what I can do» before I provided any details. When I offered more information, he declined, saying something like it’s not necessary. He returned to the table and had comped the liquor only. This left me wondering if he had any idea what had happened.
I could see that one of the servers looked on nervously when I spoke to manager, which made me feel bad because he was friendly and had tried to be helpful to us. As I passed him on the way out, I thanked him for this, but rather than being friendly, he said in a pouty tone and without looking at me, «You’re fine.» Wow, really?
Two people in our party are in the restaurant business. We know better than most that there are a lot of moving parts and things go wrong sometimes, and we want to see people succeed. Spectators seems to get it right when training staff to be friendly (or to at least try), but there is clearly a big lapse, with both management and staff, when it comes to the appropriate way to take responsibility, make amends, and remain friendly when things go wrong. Hungry customers who have been waiting for 90 minutes shouldn’t be told that the french onion soup is delayed because they want the cheese to be hot. Managers shouldn’t be presumptuous, or hurried, or lacking in curiosity in such situations. Staff shouldn’t show petulance.

Breakfast after a night at the Sheraton. Food was fine, service was horrendous. Took 1.25 hours for what should have easily been 30 min. Took 25 min before we even got coffee. Waiter simply disappeared for 15 minute clips repeatedly. Never received some side items. Horrible.

I think this place is just fine for a hotel bar. The beer was nice and cold, your typical Boulevard beers you’ll find in the KC area. Food was decent. Hummus was fair, pita was fine. Service was very good, attentive, and very nice.

Rebooted as a «gastropub», the only restaurant left in the Sheraton (formerly a Hyatt) is still a major disappointment. They should NOT be allowed to use the gastropub phrase with this menu — it’s standard-​issue hotel food that doesn’t come anywhere near being as food-​focused as, say, Gram & Dun or Westside Local.
I rarely send food back, but I had to refuse the $ 22 spaghetti pesto. Too much sauce and barely any pesto (mostly cream) couldn’t hide the overcooked spaghetti and inedible shrimp. How exactly does one make shrimp inedible these days?
My partner had a chicken sandwich that was decent. We ended up splitting it after I sent back my pasta.
Wine selections were fine. All Boulevard products on tap (but nothing else). Service was okay. The dining room has the ambience of a conference center. The country music also helped expedite our visit.
My suggestions: Narrow the menu (and visit an actual gastropub while you’re at it), ditch that horrible pasta, focus a bit more on the beer selection, and just close the dining room to focus on the more intimate bar area.

Their management failed in epic proportions during our stay. During a conference, we took classes at the hotel and frequented the restaurant for lunch and drinks. The food was fine and wait staff worked very hard to accommodate the large amount of customers. However, one customer had a profusely bleeding leg and bled several large pools of blood on the floor. I understand that accidents happen, and this was of no fault or cause of the restaurant or hotel, but after it happened, and after the staff and bartenders were notified, No employee did anything to clean, protect other patrons from the mess, or address the bloody napkins which were used to soak up some of the blood and thrown on the bar, nor call for help for the lady bleeding. One patron cleaned up some of the blood with napkins and no gloves and threw them on the bar near my drinks and they lay there for several minutes while we were seated drinking. Disgusting, unsafe, and incredible lack of proper training and management for what could have been a simple thing to correct. Get some OSHA training and protocols in place for your staff and customers. Our entire group left the establishment early and won’t be back. This was the worst experience at a bar/​restaurant that I’ve ever had.

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 décor 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.

If Skies is the still-​sexy, free-​of-​augmentation, classy cougar of lounges at the Hyatt Regency Crown Center then Spectators is your uncle with a gross comb-​over that sells insurance. It’s very hard to stay at the Hyatt without noticing Spectator’s as it faces the elevator bank and you must pass it each time you use the Link. What you mostly notice is that it’s almost always empty.
During a recent nostalgiathon of KC, Spectator’s was awkwardly inserted into the mix. As my pal and I waited in lobby we figured we might as well grab a drink. We had a fridge full of *good* beer upstairs, but Spectator’s seemed more convenient than schlepping back up 28 floors to our room.
Generic jerseys and non-​consequential sports memorabilia placed very strategically all over the place is the first thing I noticed. Sometimes memorabilia can be endearing when it reflects a very specific taste of the owner or the locale, but this surely represented what some drip at a Hyatt office in suburban Atlanta thinks KC would like in a sports bar. I’m not going to say the atmosphere is lame, but I’m pretty sure Midway Airport will be back to repossess this joint at some point.
Hundreds of servicemen gathered within feet of the entrance socializing before a military ball that was also being held at the Hyatt that evening. However, there were only about 8 people inside the place. You know you’re not doing something right when someone in the military fresh off living in a storage unit in Afghanistan has no desire to drink at your bar.
We ordered our drinks after waiting for someone tending bar to finally emerge from the back. It appeared there were at least three people working that also disappeared into some enchanting Spectator’s black hole. The bartender awkwardly tried to make small talk after emerging, but it was quite apparent he had limited skills to start any sort of conversation that didn’t make me want to gouge out my eyes. As we sat and finished our tourist-​priced hotel drinks a couple different servicemen and their dates approached the bar to find it completely abandoned again– just as we did. I wanted to yell something obnoxious to retrieve a staff member from the Spectator’s black hole, but I didn’t. Instead my pal and I, demoralized, slurped our drinks and got the hell out of that mess.
No bar should make you feel sorry it exists. No bar should make you feel stressed. I feel sorry that Spectator’s even exists because it’s just so achingly pathetic. I would improve it by just replacing it with a blank wall. That would be a lot less offensive to those that gaze upon it and are forced to pass by it.

The sports bar at the Hyatt Regency Crown Center has some nice features.
First, it’s open later than any other restaurant in the hotel. That makes it the place for conventioneers to gather as their flights come in from around the country. Second, they have a decent selection of cocktails. Third, they have satisfying sandwiches.
Our group gathered at a table under the big-​screen TV after we had checked in and hung our clothes. We discovered that just two sandwiches appealed to almost everyone: the BBQ beef brisket, and the portabella mushroom.
Now, someone who lives here might not give the BBQ beef brisket much credit, but for a traveler who has been dreaming about barbecue ever since he heard the convention would be in KC, this was a must-​do. I could tell the waitress liked the sandwich by the way she smiled and almost danced as she described it. She said the sauce was a combination of ½ Gates and ½ KC Masterpiece, so I knew there was something special about this sandwich.
The BBQ beef sandwich, with french fries, an appletini, a diet Pepsi, and a glass of merlot, came to about $ 37 + tip. Not bad for hotel fare. Also, the service was great. After a slow start, I watched as the entire staff pulled together as a team, and although it was almost closing time, made sure that we were all satisfied.