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Those seeking steak this Inlander Restaurant Week will have a hard time topping the Zabuton at Spencer's.
As someone who tends to gravitate towards searching for interesting cheap eats, pretty much the last thing ever on my mind would be to dine at a restaurant in a hotel. That's no knock against the typical fine dining establishments that can be found in many upscale inns, but rather a very obvious hurdle of my brain. If I'm in sitting around my abode in Spokane, I'm not compelled to head to many hotels, and if I'm traveling, I tend to seek out great food options as a way to explore various parts of a city I've never seen. So with that in mind, I decided to kick off IRW '25 by pushing out of my typical mental comfort zone by heading to Spencer's for Steak and Chops, located at the downtown DoubleTree, for the first time.
The low-lit fine dining aura is evident the moment one enters Spencer's, and the joint pretty much nails the basics you'd want from an steakhouse worth its salt. For my Restaurant Week array ($45 per person), I chose the Caesar salad for the first course, followed by the six ounce Zabuton steak for my entree and a DoubleTree cookie bar for desert.
The salad offered a very solid starter, with the flavorful parmesan crisp elevating it a slight notch above the average Caesar. But the Zabuton steak was undeniably the star of the show. The cut of American Wagyu is up there with the best steaks I've had at any restaurants. The way it's cooked results in an flavorful and wonderfully crisp exterior without getting in the way of the tender and juicy high-grade meat that rests within (absolutely the ideal texture combo for someone like me who prefers their steak cooked rare). Each bite was a delight, with a flavorful kick provided by a huge pad of bearnaise butter (which I applied sparingly but some people will go gaga for), and the sides of well-seasoned broccolini and mashed potatoes provided exactly the type of elevated meat and potatoes meal I seek when venturing to a steakhouse.
Capping things off, the DoubleTree cookie bar is probably among the densest desert options on any IRW menu. It almost feels like a compacted brick of the hotel chain's famed chocolate chip cookies, and I mean that as a compliment. Paired with dollops of whipped cream and vanilla ice cream to counterbalance its rich density, I wasn't even able to finish it because it was so substantial. But I also wasn't upset one bit because it was a completely satisfying topper to my first visit to Spencer's.
Find places of your own to check into this Inlander Restaurant Week.
