Happy Hour of the Week: Brasa—CLOSED
• HOURS: Daily from 5–7pm
• PRICES: food specials between $4 and $7; house reds and white wine for $4 a glass, $18 a bottle.
He arrives first, winding his way through the tables in the bar area with a confident lope, settling on a seat along the wall near the bar. The server approaches. “I’d better wait,” he says, eying the entrance. On second thought he’ll have a glass of red. She’ll be here soon.
When I first arrived in Seattle three years ago and started jawing about food with whomever would talk to me, I slowly became acquainted was a segment of this city’s population that I came to call the Happy Hour Warriors. These people eat out often and they eat well, but they never pay full price. They know all the best food happy hours in town, when to go, what to get, where to sit, and which waiters will toss in a dozen extra fries for their favorite HH regulars.
Every warrior I met directed me to Brasa, Tamara Murphy’s massive Spanish restaurant on Third Avenue in Belltown. They spoke of tall paper cones full of skinny fries to dip into a spicy aioli or the oil-dotted broth moating a pile of massive mussels. They talked of crostini topped with the groaningly good jamon Serrano on which Spanish people survive. “You can totally make a dinner out of it,” I heard, again and again, until one night I did. I walked through the door at 5pm after finding a parking spot directly in front, a minor miracle. By 5:15 the bar area was jampacked but the warriors kept pouring in, their hungry eyes scanning the long narrow bar area, holding out hope for an open table.
When I returned on a Friday three years later, I arrived at 6pm and braced myself for a wait. But there were only two other parties in all of Brasa, all corralled behind the bar side of the wavy, Gaudi-inspired ironwork that divides it from the restaurant. At around 6:15 the guy in paragraph one joined us, his no-bullshit attitude and obvious familiarity with the restaurant identifying him instantly as a HHW. His wife showed up 15 minutes later, slid into the booth next to him so that they both stared out at the expanse of empty tables in the main dining room. He ordered paella ($8), she joined him in a glass of happy hour red, a 2007 Sangre de Toro Catalunya ($4), and chose the curried mussels ($6) and the green salad ($4). Because I’m a freak, I mentally calculated their bill in my head. Twenty-six dollars. For dinner. At Brasa. Not a bad show.
My table adopted a decidedly messier (not to mention piggier) approach: Serrano crostini ($4), fries ($4), a lamb burger ($7), and those curried mussels ($6), slightly sweet, bigass bivalves delightfully drenched in a curry broth. The crunchy crostini came topped with an oily piquillo pepper tongue and a slice of salty Serrano, the lamb burger was juicy but underseasoned, not bad but at this point the lamb-burger bar is set pretty high in this town. (See Campagne, Bastille, and Barolo.)
Happy hour goers can purchase wine by the glass or bottle ($4, $18). The 2008 Eximius Vinho Branco Estremadura is a versatile enough Portuguese table blend—light and citrusy—that complimented the mussels especially. The food was satisfying and distinct, the service was prompt, the wine just fine. Combine all that with the no-hassle timetable of 5 to 7pm daily, and Brasa’s is a topshelf happy hour by any measure, one that seems to have diminished not at all over the past three years.
Which only leaves me wondering: where have all the warriors gone?
