Spectators Sports Bar & Grill

I love this place. Such solidly good waitstaff, stiff drinks, and amazing food. Thank you Spectators for consistently offering the best neighborhood bar experience!

New to ABQ, drove around last Sunday looking for a place to watch the Falcons play, found this place, good food & customer service definitely where I’ll be watching the games on Sundays when I’m in town!

Specs is a great place to go to watch a game. Lots of TVs, and they’re usually willing to put the game you want on a TV near you. Usually.
Outside of game time, Specs is still a great place, because they offer some of the best food at any bar in ABQ. From burgers to apps like carne adovada egg rolls, rolled tacos, wings, or their legendary ribs, everything is always made in house, and really good.
They struggle a bit with service, it seems like they have a revolving door of servers for some reason, although most of the bartenders have been around a while.
They also recently stopped serving Marble IPA, reportedly because Marble is opening a tap room a few miles away and they took offense. I miss being able to get my favorite beer with their awesome food.

Eh.
We came here yesterday to watch the Cowboys Game. My hubby and in-​laws have frequented Spectators throughout the years. This was my second time.
Walking into the bar, it was packed. Luckily my hubby snagged us a table by one of the Cowboys TV’s. We ordered a variety of drinks, apps and entrees while watching the game.
I ordered the Albuquerque burger with green chili, guacamole and jack cheese. It was ok, but the fries were frozen and fried and you could tell. The apps were better than my meal: fried zucchini, potato skins and wings.
The service was awful. Terrible even. Our waitress never stopped by our table and made us feel like a huge inconvenience for needing refills. There were numerous times where she would slam drinks on the table and just walk away.
This is a sports bar and you don’t come here for the service. For sports games this is a great spot. Just don’t expect much from the staff in terms of friendliness.

If you want to spend the night where you can’t hear anyone in your group talking, this may be the bar for you. I have been here twice and both times I’m left utterly disappointed. Lack of service is apparent on arrival. If you are not a regular they will cut you off after 3 drinks, regardless of how you are acting. If you are looking to meet up with your future, much older than you, obese ex wife then this may be the bar for you. It is in a nice area, which begs the question how is it still there? And that’s the question to be asked. If you have the opportunity to go to Howies sports bar instead of this abortion of a bar, pleases do.

I love this place! Great food-​excellent service-​Pool-​trivia-​darts-​shuffleboard-​karaōke-​TVs-​alcohol– what more can I ask for? Everyone is very friendly!

The place is alright, they just have this horrible bartender that instead of being nice and welcome us it felt more like she was annoyed that there were two new customers. My friend asked the bartender her recommendations on burgers and she replied «I don’t know, we have a lot of burgers» with a rude tone. I asked her to make me something sweet and she replied «This is not a fancy bar» so I asked her to make me a drink with two specific liquors and she replied «I have never heard of that drink» so she just didn’t make it for me. Thanks for the worst service! I have been to other «non-​fancy» bars where the bartender actually know how to make drinks besides Jack and Coke.

Good food, friendly staff. The atmosphere is typical American bar with pool tables and virtual golf machines. The menu offers many different options and has some of the best food in the city when it comes to certain menu items. I can’t get enough of their chicken fingers and I’ve heard that nothing beats them when you combo them with the green chile stew. A great place to go and get a bite to eat with your friends and to have a fun time hanging out.

Ok, I’m slightly torn about spectators. I love the karaōke guy, when he does the tenacious d duo it cracks me up every time! I dig it that they have pool/​darts/​shuffleboard/​games. I do not dig their shuffleboard sand policy. I’m used to having my own sand, played a tiny bit back in the day in old ATX and guess what? Every single place provided the shaker. Tonight I had the guy tell me that more sand equals slower pucks. I like to investigate so the following are two excerpts from
-
«Shuffleboard maintenance requires a few different steps. 1. Short term maintenance includes keeping your tables well covered with shuffleboard „sand“. This will keep the puck from directly touching the polymer or polyurethane top.
AND
This material also acts as a protectant, lessening the friction of the puck to the table and allowing the finish to last a longer life.»
In short more sand decreases friction — more speed not less, and increases the life of a shuffleboard. Who knew?! I keep recommending this place to friends, if you’re laid back its a pretty fun time, but I’m not sure I’ll play sb again…

Went with my wife to sing some karaōke. The host got us right in as new singers which was cool. We did wait another 1.75 hours for our second turn in a pretty slow looking bar. The irritating part was that the host sang literally every song (as backup, and sometimes as lead over the person singing). If he had something to say to you, he chooses to do it over the mic. This was our only night in town so we went with the first bar Unilocal gave us. With more time to research we would have gone elsewhere.

This place reminds me of Cheers. It’s not your typical tits and ass bar, and it’s just a nice, laid back place that isn’t pretentious. The staff and food are just amazing. Steve and Sara are awesome and have always been so kind to my husband and I. They always remember us when we go in, and they treat us like regulars, even though we don’t go there every day like some typical regulars. Their chile cheese fries are our favorite, and the rest of the food is pretty darn good, too.

Been going here for years. Such a fun place! We love the wings! Not too crowded and great service– we will be back.

I really enjoyed the mushroom swiss burger here. The meat was seasoned well, grilled to perfection, and compliments the bun. good food for a great value. i will be back!

The staff at Spectators is on top of it with service tonight. I haven’t been here in a long time and didn’t realize what a great social place this is and then the food came, so good. I had a basic bacon and cheese burger but gosh damn it was good. And great place to watch SEA beat WA.

I just moved in nearby, and I have to say, the staff here is awesome. They’re welcoming and friendly without being cordial or obnoxious. They’re conversational without being intrusive and are generally just a cool group of people. It’s a great place to wind down with a drink without worrying about noise or big crowds. Plus they have tons of tv’s for the days a game worth watching is actually on.

I came here for the first time a few weeks ago for a Lobos game and if your a Lobos fan this is the place to be. Food is great and the staff is awesome.
Tonight I got the Heavyweight Burrito with Christmas (Red & Green Chile). Great food.

Spectator’s is my team’s home. With that said — the pool tables are average and in a good location, off to the side where there is not a lot of traffic. There is an area adjacent with tables for folks to watch sports so it’s a nice mix.
The service has been excellent and my teammates regularly eat there so the food must be okay, although I have not eaten there myself.

This place is a total hole in the wall they haven’t managed to update to flat screens so they have a bunch of big screen tvs and the bar is in desperate need of a make over minus that the food is pretty awesome great burgers and beer specials. The only thing that prevents me from going back is the atmosphere and the old regulars.

There are several TVs, the staff is really friendly, and there are always beer specials…
And yet, I can’t imagine going back. We were by far the youngest people in the place. I’m not sure anybody under the age of 50 was there besides the wait staff. One guy literally came in with an oxygen bottle — I wish I was joking, for his health and mine.
Despite the previously mentioned positives and delicious chili cheese fries, the atmosphere and clientele ensure that I won’t be back.

Food still respectable, and Jamie is a great server.
I just saw on the menu that they have 40+ TV’s including 9 big screens (rear projection styles).