We begin downtown with The Diller Room, the cocktail lounge inside Stella coffee house at the corner of First and University.

The Diller Room’s happy hour scores big points for lasting from 5 to 8pm and featuring $5 snacks (including two kinds of slider—monte cristo and BLT), and $3 wells and drafts. Billing yourself as a cocktail lounge and then brandishing a Bacardi logo on your web site is dubious practice, this fact does not escape me. But the Diller Room is actually quite cool and I’m happy enough with the happy hour that I can let it go.

Moving up towards the market there is ths new-ish wine bar 106 Pine, owned by the people who brought us the neighboring Chocolate Box and managed by the very knowledgeable Shannon Borg. 106 Pine has tasting events every Thursday. Next up on April 8 from 5-7pm, a rep from Woodinville’s Cru Selections will be pouring wines from Hestia, Guardian, and Cullin Hills.

Meanwhile, Wallingford’s 45th Street has welcomed a very techie-friendly new pinball bar called The Grizzled Wizard. Happy hour here starts at 4pm and also lasts until 8pm every day—I’m seeing a trend and I’m liking what I see. Right now the GW is doing ye olde frozen-dinner-as-food-menu trick, but promises bbq and tacos in the future.

Finally, Pour House, in the area of Greenlake some people call Tangletown, opened in Mid-March and has two sections—a cocktail lounge for adults only, and an all-ages dining room for families. Pour House has a $5 food menu offered from 4 to 6pm and again from 10 to close. This menu features no less than three types of slider: hamburger, portabello mushroom, and Jamaican jerk chicken.