What exactly do you do with a hotel lobby bar on a Tuesday night in Spokane? That’s the question I found myself asking as I pushed through the glass doors of the Davenport Grand on West Main, a building that always looks slightly more ambitious than its surroundings, which is either a compliment or a critique depending on your mood.
The Davenport Grand is the newer sibling in the Davenport hotel family — opened in 2015, occupying a tower that feels genuinely contemporary rather than nostalgic, which sets it apart from the ornate Historic Davenport a few blocks east. The lobby bar here, called the District Bar & Kitchen, runs along the ground floor with floor-to-ceiling windows facing West Main. It’s the kind of space that could easily feel sterile and corporate, the way airport hotel bars do when they’re trying too hard. Somehow it mostly avoids that.
The room is tall and open, with warm lighting doing real work after dark. On a weeknight you might find a conference crowd nursing IPAs, a few couples splitting flatbreads before a show at the Fox, and a solo traveler with a laptop who has fully committed to the pretense of being productive. The staff moves efficiently without being brisk. Nobody treats you like an interruption, which, in my experience, is not universally true of hotel bars in this price bracket.
The drink list leans Pacific Northwest without being preachy about it. Local spirits show up — a few Eastern Washington whiskeys, some regional wine options — alongside a serviceable rotating tap selection. I ordered a Walla Walla Cabernet that came correctly poured and at the right temperature. The bartender didn’t offer unsolicited commentary about the vintage, which I appreciated.
Food is the mixed part. The menu covers the standard hotel-bar territory: shareables, sandwiches, a burger, a salmon dish trying to justify its price point. The truffle fries are better than they need to be. The flatbread I tried one visit — roasted mushroom with arugula — was fine but slightly under-seasoned, the kind of dish that would benefit from thirty more seconds in the oven and a pinch more salt. The salmon was actually good: properly cooked, not drowned in sauce, plated with restraint. Entrées run $18–$32. Cocktails are $12–$16. You know what you’re signing up for.
What makes the Grand worth the stop, particularly if you’re not a guest, is the skywalk access. From the second floor you can cross over West Main into the Spokane Convention Center complex, which connects to the INB Performing Arts Center on event nights. If you’re catching a touring Broadway show or a symphony performance and don’t want to scramble for a dinner reservation, grabbing drinks and a flatbread here before walking across the bridge is a genuinely sensible plan.
The Grand also has a rooftop terrace that opens seasonally. On a clear July evening with the Spokane skyline going gold, it’s one of the better open-air spots in the city. It gets busy on weekend nights — locals know about it — so arriving before 7 p.m. gives you the best chance at a table with an actual view rather than a standing-room spot near the service station.
Is this where you should spend every evening in Spokane? No. But if you want somewhere comfortable and reliably competent, with a cocktail that won’t embarrass itself and a sightline that earns its keep, the Davenport Grand’s lobby bar does what it promises. That’s a lower bar than it sounds, and it clears it.
