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Happy Hour

Happy Hour Spotlight: Jerzy’s Wine Bar in Redmond

Croque monsieur sliders. What else is there to say, really?

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Mar 11, 2010 at 10:32AM 1 Comments

Headed out to Redmond yesterday and what did I happen upon while lost amongst the strip malls of Redmond Way? Jerzy’s Wine Bar and Bistro, a little wine-bar-in-a-house nestled improbably, adorably between shopping centers. Spotting it, I did a dangerous left turn into a nearby parking lot and crept over to investigate.

As I skulked around the red shingled house to a sweet little patio area near the entrance, a goated man pulled up on a bicycle and we got to chatting. There was a language barrier, but I gathered he was an employee, and soon enough the owner came out and joined us. I was soon invited inside, where I found a cozy little barroom with bottle-lined shelves and curlicue ironwork and one blue wall and a lot of other randomness that all somehow added up to something good, to somewhere you’d want to spend a little time.

Happy hour at Jerzy’s runs Monday through Saturday from 5 to 7pm (the bar is closed Sundays). There are $5 reds and white, five different types of bruschetta, croque monsieur sliders, and various “tapas” (olives and whatnot). Jerzy’s also has a very nice lunch deal: soup or salad, entrée, and a glass of wine for $8.

My Redmond go-to happy hour has always been the Matador, but now I think I might be hitting up Jerzy’s. Croque monsieur sliders? Come on now. Wonder what other HH gems are hiding out there in Microsoft land….

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Tags: Happy Hour, Lunch, Wine Bars, Redmond

Happy Hour

Dive Bar Happy Hours

Five Points announces new HH, Owl and Thistle’s old HH is still good stuff.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Mar 10, 2010 at 10:01AM 0 Comments

The Five Points Cafe recently announced a new happy hour. It’s 4 to 6pm on weekdays and begins Friday, March 12. Deals include a cheeseburger and fries for $2.50, $3 deep-fried Beecher’s cheese curds (hmmm, at that price, I wonder how they compare to Steelhead’s), and calamari for $3.50. Well drinks are also $3.50 while domestic draft beers are $2 and microbrews cost $3.

Another good dive-bar happy hour is that at Owl N Thistle. I’d always thought of the out-of-the-way basement bar on Post Ave as a sleepy lunch spot, but it comes alive at HH. Bud and Bud light are $2 a pint, micros and well drinks are $3. You can get fries or soup for $2.25, a burger, beef stew, hummus platter, or spinach and artichoke dip for $2.95. Fish and chips are $3.50.

But what really recommends Owl N Thistle is that the staff is generally welcoming to everyone and the customers tend to be pretty mellow. I’ve been in dive bars in Seattle where juiced-up bartenders wielded insane accusations at customers for no reason, and others where customers drank too much and put the staff in the unfortunate position of giving them the boot. I’ve also been at dive bars where the bartender would only serve his friends and/or was obnoxious to everyone whose clothing didn’t reflect die-hard death metal fandom. There seems to be a minimum of such bad energy at ONT, and the service is always friendly, casual, and slightly inattentive. (This isn’t Canlis after all, no one needs to put your napkin on your lap.) That’s the way it should be at a proper dive, and the reason I suggest it to you.

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Tags: Happy Hour, Beer, Pioneer Square, Dive Bars

Happy Hour

Happy Hour Changes at Grand Cru and Fonte

New HH wines and foods Downtown and in Bellevue.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Mar 04, 2010 at 08:47AM 0 Comments

Happy hour at Grand Cru wine bar in Bellevue is all night long on Mondays. Tuesday through Saturday it runs from 4 to 6pm, luring Eastsiders with half-price wines by the glass and half-price foods from the dinner menu.

The wine bar has added four new dishes to the HH menu: Thai-style Dungeness crab cakes, red curry steamed Penn Cove mussels, a salmon pate, and a Tuscan white bean dip. There are also snackies like feta dip and a crostini trio, prices range from $3 to about $8.

Downtown, Fonte’s happy hour has changed as well. The coffee shop/wine bar used to offer “sommelier’s choice” wines—one red, one white—for $3, now it is charging half price for the entire wine list. This is a great development, in my humble opinion, this chance to try a lot of new wines at a discount. All draft beers are now $3 during HH, and some of the prices on food have changed too: The spicy lamb sliders, always a solid choice at Fonte, are now $5 instead of $3. That was a little too good to last, I suppose.

The HH runs Fridays and Saturdays from 5 to 6:30pm and again from 9 to 10pm, and Sunday through Thursday from 5 to 6:30pm and 8 to 9pm. That’s a little tricky to remember, but you can always get one of those happy hour iPhone/Android apps designed by competing local alt weeklies. The question is: which one?

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Tags: Happy Hour, Bellevue, Downtown, Wine, Wine Bars

Happy Hour

It’s Happy Hour at Visions Lounge, and the Sun is Setting.

The sun is scheduled to set at 5:43 today. Visions Lounge has happy hour from four to six pm. Go get in on that view.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Feb 22, 2010 at 09:15AM 0 Comments

* HOURS: Weekdays from 4 to 6pm * PRICES: Food specials between $2 and $4; well drinks and selected wines by the glass $5; beer $4; $7 selected specialty cocktail.

The sun is scheduled to set today at 5:43pm, by Friday that time will have slid back to 5:50pm. This is a trend in the right direction, I get that. However, it does put some urgency into scheduling a happy hour at the Visions Lounge at the Renaissance Hotel.

High in the sky, filled with plush upholstered seating, flanked on two walls with windows boasting views of the skyline and Sound beyond, the Visions Lounge is an old-fashioned (80s) feeling cocktail bar; it looks like a place where the boys from Bosom Buddies might have taken their dates—their lady dates, the ones who don’t know that they are drag queens. There is no absinthe fountain or glass jar full of lemon-infused vodka. The specialty cocktails are made with stuff like Stoli Rasberry and Malibu coconut-flavored rum.

Nevermind those. Happy hour runs from 4 to 6pm on weekdays, right now that means when you scarf down $4 HH apps (fig and prosciutto flatbreads, fried asparagus with Cajun remoulade) while sipping a draft beer for $4 or a glass of wine for $5, you can do so while watching as the setting sun glints up the skyscrapers and throws little pazzazzes of light all over the water.

Time’s awastin’.

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Tags: Happy Hour, Downtown, Hotel Bars

Happy Hour

Happy Hour of the Week: Post Restaurant and Lounge

At this bunker of a Post Alley bar, order mini-burgers but not lamb sliders.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Feb 17, 2010 at 12:35PM 0 Comments

• HOURS: Daily from 4 to 7pm
• PRICES: Food specials between $4 and $6; wines by the glass from $5 to $7 and by the bottle from $15-$28; $4 draft beers; $4 well cocktails.

I’ve always liked how Post Restaurant and Lounge reminded me of the Hatch on Lost. If you don’t know what I mean by that, go get your hands on the first two seasons of that show and I’ll see you in a few weeks.

A tiny bunker of a Post Alley bar that is flanked by Kell’s on one side and the shopping center that houses the White Horse Trading Co on the other, Post opened about a year ago. Then, a few months back, Patrick McAleese (whose family owns Kell’s) and his business partner took over. A tall Irishman with a flair for interior design, McAleese has added soft-edged bric-a-brac to contrast with the cementy lockdown feel, but all the table votives, silky harem pillows, and grape bunch-shaped chandeliers can’t stop this place from feeling like a spooky underground lair.

And why would you want them to? It’s awesome to drink in a cave under Pike Place Market. Especially on a weekday evening in winter when it is dark as evil outside. I go to happy hour at Post all the time. I think of it as my panic room.

You should come. I can tell you what to eat: the juicy mini-burgers, but not the dry lamb sliders, and maybe some artichoke jalapeno dip served with little toasties—one must eat the occasional vegetable, after all. I can share a bottle of Portuguese white wine ($15) with you, the kind of wine that goes down easy and you can drink a lot of and still feel fine. The kind of wine you can drink while having the sort of deep, meandering conversation you wish would never end.

There are seven wines on the happy hour menu, six of them available by the bottle. Remember this is not your last meal, this is your Tuesday night refuge. You will be charged accordingly.

Just after it opened last year, I went to Post and there was a wake at the next table. If you want to read about that, it’s here.

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Tags: Happy Hour, Pike Place Market