Region: Ballard.

Description: Wildly popular Puerto Rican restaurant and rum
bar.

Happy hour: Daily 3–6 pm, Mon–Sat 10
pm–midnight.

Happy-hour food specials: Discount appetizers, including $2
alcapurrias (green bananas, tarot root, plantain dough, hot
sauce, and a veggie or meat filling) and $3.50 bacalaitos (cold
fish fritters with cilantro, achiote batter, and creamy garlic
sauce).

Happy-hour rum specials: $6.50 mojitos (flavored with apple,
mango, coconut, passion fruit, pineapple, or watermelon rum), $6 rum
runners (dark rum, blackberry brandy, pineapple, and grenadine).

Notable rum enthusiasts: Blackbeard, Richard Nixon (he
favored rum and Coke), Jimmy Buffett, Chi Chi Rodriguez, Hunter S.
Thompson, and the mighty Ernest Hemingway (witnesses watched him
successively drink 16 Papa Doble daiquiris, containing a combined two
quarts of rum; he walked away).

La Isla

2320 NW Market St, 789-0516.

Marti Jonjak—The Stranger’s fashion columnist—has a technical degree in apparel design and works in the garment industry. Her treasured casual-wear aesthetic is both glamorous and trashy, suggesting...