Downtown Drink Shrink | Jeff Josenhans

The Downtown Drink Shrinks here have certainly preached the skills and competitive level of experience you will find in a growing selection of bars throughout San Diego. Most of the trendsetters in town are freestanding bars dedicated solely to the art of bar craft.

However, there is another set of bars often overlooked when considering the bar category in San Diego: the hotel bar.

The hotel bar experience is perfect for people watchers. You will never get the same experience or meet the same people. One week you might see movie stars, the following week Chinese aristocrats and the next, symphony musicians.

The environment in a hotel bar is constantly in a state of flux, adapting to the myriad of travelers found in the building. Some hotel bars offer more than others through a co-mingling of locals and travelers. There really is no better time than now to visit a hotel bar in San Diego.

At the Nightclub and Bar Convention in Las Vegas coming in March, the Grant Grill of the US Grant Hotel in downtown will be announced as the Best Hotel Bar in the United States. The largest award ever to grace a hotel bar in Southern California landed in downtown San Diego, and hopefully this will tempt some of you to try a hotel bar next time you go out.

Downtown has several notable hotels with great bars worth a visit. The US Grant, The Palomar, Solamar, Hotel Indigo, The Hard Rock, the soon-to-be renovated W San Diego, The Sophia, and the Hotel Andaz—with the newly opened Katsuya—are all great examples of watering holes worth celebrating the arrival of spring 2012.