Grand Hyatt San Francisco – Grand Club Lounge Review

August 25, 2016

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Our stay at the Grand Hyatt in San Francisco was part of Joanna’s mystery tip (introduction is here) and I posted my review of the suite and the hotel yesterday. Today I’m taking a look at the Club Lounge that the Grand Hyatt San Francisco offers.

Previous posts in this series include:

Grand Club Lounge – General Info

The Grand Club Lounge at the Grand Hyatt San Francisco is open to Hyatt’s Diamond Tier elites as well as guests who have booked a Grand Club room.

The lounge offers a variety of meal/snack services depending on the time of day.

Continental Breakfast:

Monday – Friday 05:30 – 09:30
Saturday – Sunday 07:00 – 10:00

Afternoon Service:

Daily 10:00 – 17:00

Evening Service:

Daily 17:00 – 19:00

Desserts:

Daily after 19:30

Alcoholic Beverages (Honor Bar):

17:00 – 21:00

I’ll take a look at what was on offer in the lounge later in this post, but first the lounge itself.

Grand Club Lounge – The Interior

The Grand Club lounge at the Grand Hyatt San Francisco is on the 32nd floor of the 36 story building. The entrance is nondescript and guest need a valid room key to enter the lounge.

Grand Hyatt San Francisco – Grand Club Lounge

One of the major benefits of having a lounge that high up in the hotel is that you get some pretty great views out of the windows:

Grand Hyatt San Francisco – Grand Club Lounge

The Transamerica Pyramid, Coit Tower and even Alcatraz Island are all easily viewable from the lounge…..but you are very reliant on the San Francisco weather to cooperate!

The lounge offers various seating options for guests with a few 4-seater tables…..

Grand Hyatt San Francisco – Grand Club Lounge

…and some 2-seater tables by the windows on one side of the lounge (the best views were from these seats):

Grand Hyatt San Francisco – Grand Club Lounge

The center part of the lounge has chairs and sofas for relaxing more than dining….

Grand Hyatt San Francisco – Grand Club Lounge

…while closer to the food area there was a high-bar with stools facing a large flat screen TV…..

Grand Hyatt San Francisco – Grand Club Lounge

…and there was a further high-bar with power ports and stools facing out of the east-side of the lounge:

Grand Hyatt San Francisco – Grand Club Lounge

Adjoining the area where the high-bars were to be found was an alcove with 2 iMacs, and a printer:

Grand Hyatt San Francisco – Grand Club Lounge

I’m not very good at guessing the area that a room covers but the lounge was by no means large – there were times of the day when we were lucky to get a seat – but it wasn’t overly small either….and the furnishings were comfortable.

I suspect that the lounge probably gets crowded quite quickly during the busier times of the year or when there’s a conference at the hotel.

Grand Club Lounge – Food & Drink

The lounge changed parts of what it offered on a daily basis so the pictures below really so a snapshot of what the club was offering on a given day. Some basic items repeated while others were rotated out in favor of new, different, items…which I thought was very good.

Although I somehow failed to get a pictures of these, I can confirm that the lounge has a coffee machine that’s available all day and an offers filter coffee, hot water and various tea bags throughout the day.

There’s also a set of refrigerators under the counters which hold juices, sodas, water and even yoghurts. Again, these are all available throughout the day.

Grand Hyatt San Francisco – Grand Club Lounge

Continental Breakfast

In true continental breakfast style the lounge offered various pastries, muffins and cakes….

Grand Hyatt San Francisco – Grand Club Lounge

….as well as granola….

Grand Hyatt San Francisco – Grand Club Lounge

…..pre-packaged cereals….

Grand Hyatt San Francisco – Grand Club Lounge

….and a very good selection of juices (no one was trying the pomegranate juice and they were really missing out!)

The lounge also offered bagels, smoked salmon, cream cheese and accompaniments:

Grand Hyatt San Francisco – Grand Club Lounge

There were 2 – 3 different types of cheese laid out every day…..

Grand Hyatt San Francisco – Grand Club Lounge

…as well as plenty of fruit:

Most surprisingly, for a continental breakfast, the lounge also offered eggs + an accompaniment (usually small sausages) every day.

Grand Hyatt San Francisco – Grand Club Lounge

For a lounge breakfast offering this was pretty good. Sure, it’s not the same as having a free full-on breakfast in the restaurant that you get at Hyatts that don’t have a lounge…but it was hard to complain at the choice on offer here.

Afternoon Service

I’m not so sure that lounge should use the word “service” in this context as there wasn’t exactly vey much being….erm….served…

Grand Hyatt San Francisco – Grand Club Lounge

The cookies were quite nice, the fruit was fine too and you can see the coffee machine and filter coffee/hot water containers in the background….that was it.

I’m not complaining or criticising as I don’t think a lounge needs to offer more than this during the day, I’m just pointing out that this is less of a “service” and more of a “few snacks”.

Evening Service

The lounge offers an honor bar during the evenings and, if I remember correctly it was $2 for a bottled beer and $3 for wine/sparkling wine….or at least the prices were in that area.

Food-wise the lounge say it puts out hors d’oeuvres after 5pm but it turns out that it offers quite a bit more too.

Mixed hors d’oeuvres:

Grand Hyatt San Francisco – Grand Club Lounge

Crudités and various dips:

Grand Hyatt San Francisco – Grand Club Lounge

Mixed cheese and fruit:

Grand Hyatt San Francisco – Grand Club Lounge

And even a few hot options too….

Grand Hyatt San Francisco – Grand Club Lounge

…vegetarian pasta in tomato sauce…..

Grand Hyatt San Francisco – Grand Club Lounge

…and chicken pasta in tomato sauce….

Grand Hyatt San Francisco – Grand Club Lounge

You could easily make an evening meal out of what the lounge offers (not that we did) and it’s a better spread than I’ve seen at most of the other lounges I’ve visited (granted, this was my first Hyatt lounge).

Bottom Line

The staff in the lounge were super-friendly and helpful and they were pretty good at clearing away used cutlery, plates, glasses etc…to make way for new arrivals to the lounge.

While there wasn’t much on offer in the lounge during the day it was still nice to be able to drop by when we were in the area to get a quick cup of coffee or some water.

Joanna and I both found the breakfast more than enough for our needs and, although we never really sampled the evening service to any great degree (SF has some great restaurants so it’s a shame to fill up in the lounge) it looked perfectly good enough to us.

Definitely one of the better lounges I’ve seen in the US.