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We've all done some drinking in hotel bars, but it's almost always a matter of circumstance. The wedding reception is done, but you're not. You've paused your cross-country marathon drive for the night and convenience store white zin isn't going to take the edge off. The most important thing about a hotel bar is that it's there when you need it – and you can charge it to the room.
Spectators Bar and Grill has the special advantage of being walking distance from Amway Arena. In the lobby of Orlando Marriott Downtown, you can park the car in an overpriced lot and do some pre-event eating and drinking at Spectators before going inside the arena and refinancing your car loan for two draft beers and nachos.
Spectators has just enough sports memorabilia and TVs to pass as a sports bar, but the black lacquer and tableaux of wine bottles over the bar are standard-issue hotel bar. Large for a lobby bar, you can cluster around the island bar or find a quiet table in the shadows.
Scoping: It's busiest at Spectators in the couple hours before a concert or touring show at the Bob Carr. On off nights, you'll find the male business travelers socializing at the bar. Women? I did see a giggly group planning a wedding one night, but a week later, it was two (separate) women eating while reading books.
Drinking: Spectators has true brand loyalty in draft beer. It only carries Anheuser-Busch products at $5 a pint. That's the standards like Bud Light and Mich Ultra, but also the Guinness clone Bare Knuckle Stout (not as smooth as Guinness, but drinkable) and the Bud-distributed Widmer Brothers Hefeweizen (again decent, but not as aromatic as my fave, Tucher).
Chewing: Everything on the Spectators menu is also available as room service, and I'm guessing that the Marriott catering office had something to do with naming items. Who else would turn ham and cheese into “prosciutto di Parma and Taleggio served with Banyuls glazed onion, arugula and oven-dried tomatoes?”
As an appetizer, the grilled cheese sandwich with tomato soup ($10) is tasty, but not geared to sharing. A thick cut of aged Gouda is panini-pressed in brioche, simple but rich. The cup of soup is made with mild yellow tomatoes, garlicky and thick with cream.
Rock shrimp and watercress salad ($14) is such a plentiful serving that after 10 minutes of eating, I still had what appeared to be a full bowl. The shrimp are firm and flavorful and the citrus honey dressing doesn't overwhelm, but the menu description promised “peppered raspberries.” While I got hints of fruit and black pepper in the dressing, I didn't see a single berry.
The honey lime glazed mahi mahi sandwich ($14) is served with tomatoes and a caper remoulade (aka tartar sauce) that adds a sharp salty contrast to the sweet glaze. The Old Bay shrimp sub ($15) is a lot like a seafood take on the Philly cheese steak – peppers, onions, Munster cheese and shrimp in, of course, Old Bay Seasoning. Both sandwiches come with a side of adequate fries.
You can't be a hotel sports bar without having burgers. The standard Spectators hamburger ($14) is a 12-ounce patty, but then there is the massive M&M burger ($18). The menu says it comes with two 12-ounce patties and three slices each of American and provolone cheese, but when I ordered the beast, it came to the bar with three patties. “Yeah, sometimes the kitchen just does that,” my bartender said. She also told me that the M&M burger was added to menu as a joke, a tribute to someone with those initials ... but then customers started actually ordering it.
The M&M burger is so tall that you can't even take one bite from the top and then one from the bottom. You need three bites to get through its full height – or just knock the thing over and attack it with knife and fork. As far as flavor, the patties are OK, but I'd like them much better if they weren't pre-made and cooked past the requested medium. You also get fries and a full dill pickle.
Going: Being off the lobby, Spectators doesn't have bathrooms of it own. The men’s room by the Hertz rental desk has four convex art mirrors on the wall near the urinals. As you walk up, four little pishers walk up too.
Departing: Hotel bars are geared toward folks on expense accounts and those who don't know their way around, so I understand why Spectators prices are higher than they deserve to be. (I haven't even mentioned the $29 French-cut chicken breast with root vegetables and house salad.) It's a menu with some imaginative touches, but when the new arena moves farther south and closer to a couple places with cheaper and better burgers, Spectators might need to knock a couple bucks off the bill.
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