As anyone who works retail will tell you, the main reason to hit up a happy hour is thriftiness: The booze is cheap, the food is cheapâthe ideal happy hour is a diverting entertainment for (practically) free. In search of the ever-elusive "good time," I went out with an $8 expense account to six local happy hours that proudly proclaim their thriftiness. The object was to have the best time possible for a little more than one hour of work at the current Washington State minimum wage. Of course, good times are an entirely subjective proposition, but I can tell you this much: If your idea of fun is a lot of alcohol and deep-fried food, then look around, my friendâyou're already in paradise.
Danteâs Steak & Grog in the University District (5300 Roosevelt Way NE, 525-1300, happy hour MonâFri 3â7 pm) is the bar you think of when you think of happy hours: The domestic beers are $2, you can get a huge basket of greasy, salty fries for $2, and the jukebox is free until 6:00 p.m. Danteâs looks like a high-school nerdâs dream basement, only, you know, extreme, with pinball, video games (thereâs something called âXbox 360,â which is free until 8:00 p.m.), and an air-hockey table. For a place that bills itself as a sports barânormally, any sort of sporting event makes me want to sit in a kitchen with women and sip tea until itâs overâthe kindest words I can offer is that Danteâs made me feel cozy, like, well, a homely nerdâs basement. And my eight bucks took me as far as I was willing to go, buying three Redhooks and a heaping helping of fries.
Ozzieâs Roadhouse (105 W Mercer St, 284-4618, happy hour daily 3:30â6:30 pm) has a reputation as the kind of place you donât want to take a girl unless sheâs had: (a) some martial-arts classes, and (b) all of her shots. Itâs a little bit odd, then, that the happy hour was the most unexceptional of all that I tried: The beer was $2.25 a pint, and the burgerâa previously frozen lump with 12 fries on the sideâcame to $1.95. Youâd be better off ordering the super-greasy ?sh and chips ($3.95) and a regular-priced shot, but honestly itâd be better to just ignore the whole happy hour and instead head to Ozzieâs whenever youâre consumed with the aching desire to drink a body shot off of a stranger, which is, of course, spare-no-expense territory.
Maharajah on Capitol Hill (720 E Pike St, 320-0334, happy hour daily 4â8 pm) has a much tastier happy hourâa small but yummy order of vegetarian pakora or pillowy naan is served free with every drink ($2 for well drinks and beer). The gin and tonics I drank were like a lime-tinged floor cleanerâthe perfect stiff drink for summer overintoxication. At the end of my eight bucks, I had entirely forgotten that the bar appeared to have been decorated by a hippie teenager: fabrics tacked to the ceiling, illuminated by light ?xtures that couldâve been shoplifted from a Target.
The best food available for cheap is a tossup between the Hi-Life (5425 Russell Ave NW, 784-7272, happy hour MonâFri 3â6 pm, Sat-Sun 10 pmâclose) and McCormick & Schmick's (1103 First Ave, 623-5500, happy hour MonâSat 3â6 pm, 10 pmâmidnight; Sun 4â6 pm, 9â11 pm). Everything on the Hi-Life menu is $3, which was a problem with the strict $8 budget. I opted for the Breads & Spreads platter, which came with salty kalamata tapenade, roma cheese dip, and yogurt and garlic sauce. To get as close as possible to eight bucks, I ordered a $4 menu-described "froo-froo drink"âa cosmopolitan, at the bartender's suggestion. I'd never had a cosmo before, and I never will again, but it did what it was supposed toâit was tart and fruity and, in the restroom, I found out that I was astonishingly drunk when I accidentally urinated on my own hand. Meanwhile, McCormick & Schmick's, that corporate mashup of sports 'n' seafood, got me nearly as wasted on three Irish coffeesâonly $1 each during the first hour of happy hour. I had enough cash in my $8 left over for a PBR and a terrific half-pound burger (with fries), cooked medium-rare and not at all resembling a foodstuff that had previously spent time as a hockey puck. My fellow good-time connoisseur had a plate of mussels in marinara sauce that were, by far, the best $2 shellfish he'd ever eaten. If you can handle the tourists and the clienteleâpeople who buy sweaters solely to tie them around the necks of their polo shirtsâyou simply can't do better for good food and drunk-makin' liquor than McCormick & Schmick's.
But the happiest of all the happy hours I attended earns its stripes not for any schmancy drink specials, though all the wells and drafts are $2. Vito's Madison Grill (927 Ninth Ave, 682-2695, happy hour MonâFri 4â7 pm) is pure ambience, remaining seemingly unchanged since the 1970s, with huge red-pleather booths, mirror balls spinning everywhere, and a dreamy, feathery painting of a topless woman adorning the men's-room wall. The bartender applied fistfuls of hair gel in between making drinksâmargaritas, double screwdrivers, mojitosâdesigned to taste like grown-up drinks, the kind of ring-a-ding beverages that will knock you on your ass if you're not careful. I was told anal sex jokes, people called me paisanâand I'm about as Italian as Mickey Rooneyâand when I left the bar, lit up like a Christmas tree, the sun was still hanging high in the sky and the world was still hard at work and that was just everybody else's goddamn problem. I was on Vito's time: a cheap, drunk, abundantly happy man.
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