belly up to the bar

Eat, drink and be merry.  Words to live by; words to embrace.  So let's start out this blog talking about Happy Hour (HH).

What I look for in a good HH is food deals, typically accompanied by $5 wine.  Some of my favorites spots include bokaseattle.com and elgaucho.com.  Both have "all night" HH on Mondays (and Sunday for El Gaucho).  BOKA's HH is throughout the restaurant; El Gaucho is in the bar only, so get there early.

I've done HH the last two nights.  Monday night was at ivars.com.  Ivar's offers HH from 3-close 7 nights a week.  That being said, it's always HH at Ivars.  I had the house red ($3.50).  It was a super sweet merlot (super sweet in a not so good way) but as my other choices were chardonnay or white zinfandel I went with the lesser of the evils.  Food was okay- we had the oyster shooters, fish and chips and steamed clams. That along with my 2 glasses of wine, my portion of the bill came to $21.  You can't beat the price and the service was good (especially for our party of 9).

Tonight I went to elysianbrewing.com (Stadium District) with a couple of friends from work.  Again, HH food prices were great.  We had the truffled fries (yum!), feta and yam quesadillas (mediocre) and the fish cakes (pretty good).  This location has tons of space- it's one of those places you can have everyone meet after work and there would be a chair for everyone.  Come to think of it, it almost seems too big.  But again, we had great service and for about $20 I left with a content belly and pink cheeks from the wine.

Until we dine again- ciao chow