Happy hour is 4-7 everyday.

What this means for you: $3 micros & wells, with a dollar off anything on the menu.

Hey! Biwa, the Japanese bar snack place with the best meat and veg on a stick anywhere in Portland, now offers a happy hour. And there's lot to be happy about.

A 20 ouncer of Sapporo is just $3. A six ounce Yuri Masamune sake is just $4,

Yakitori/yakimoni, like chicken breast or thigh, beef hangar steak, pork belly, garlic (which I'm told is really yummy), and corn are just $2 each. Collect them all and save!

And from the izakaya menu, they have buta kani kimchi chahan (which involves pork belly and kimchi and I'm not sure what else), vegetable chijimi (a pancake with a dipping sauce), and onigiri (addictive grilled rice ball) for $3.

These are all small plates, but it's still a substantial savings, so come by early and save...

Just saw this on extramsg.com:

Happy Hour or France on the Cheap
If a Paris café seems too far to travel for your evening repast, Carafe offers food and drink specials during happy hour —Monday through Friday from 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. Pair a Slow-roasted Pork Sandwich ($3) or Goat Cheese Spread on walnut crostini ($3) with a French Martini with vodka, crème de Framboise and pineapple juice or a Jupa Gin with gin, fresh squeezed lime juice, sugar syrup and tonic. Carafe's Happy Hour menu also offers beer, wine and aperitifs...and of course, pommes frites ($3).

Main (non-happy hour) review is in Food, downtown

Yesterday, I demanded that my better half take me to an establishment that served alcohol, stat. And thus, we ended up at kid-magnet Laurelwood Public House during happy hour.

Since I'm allergic to kids, we don't usually go there, but it did seem like a decent option for beer and food. After all, while Laurelwood's food is not great, it's consistently good and edible.

The happy hour menu includes $2.75 pints, and $3.95 food. The food options include

• the Happy Burger with fries, perhaps half the size of their regular burger (and you can add cheese for an extra buck)


• the Happy Aritichoke-Jalapeno (sic) Dip, which comes with tortilla chips (artificial artichoke?)


• the Happy Mediterranean Pizza with Pesto


• the Happy Mac 'n' Cheese with Ham (with tortilla chips)


• the Happy Taco (with tortilla chips and salsa


• the Happy Nachos (add chicken for $3 more)


• the Happy Garlic Fries


• the Happy Chicken Caesar Salad

So with dutiful grouchiness, we ordered our Happy Cheeseburgers, our Happy Nachos, and our Happy Mac 'n' Cheese. The folks next to us appeared to be at the beginning of a wake.

Like I mentioned above, the Happy Burger is a small, plain hamburger with lettuce and a single slice of insipid tomato. It comes with a small handful of fries, which are batterdipped and double-fried. I suppose someone might get full off of that serving, but my guess is that 99% of the American adult population would not. But then, none of these servings are large.

The Happy Nachos are really the most cheerful possible thing: tortilla chips covered with black bean chili, cheese, and olives. There isn't a lot of it, but, really, a little goes a long way.

The Happy Mac 'n' Cheese looks like Kraft dinner with little cubes of ham on top. And it definitely tastes like something out of a box, designed not to offend the sentiments of children, like something midway between Kraft dinner and Annie's.

So, we each spent about $9 on food. For that $9, we could have gotten any of their 1/3# hamburgers with lots of toppings, and fries or salad. Which just makes me think we were ripped off!

Anyways, if you're just feeling noshy, the Laurelwood happy hour isn't a bad deal. But if you're hungry, just stick to the regular menu.

Happy Hour at Portland Brewing (I can't seem to consistently say Pyramid Brewing, though Pyramid owns it and brands it now) is from 3-6pm, and from 9-close (Tuesday-Thursday 10:00p.m., Friday-Saturday 11:00p.m.).

They offer $2.50 imperial pints, a $3 drink special, and 5 $3 food items (onion rings, chicken strips, pork taco, hummus plate, and a fresh tomato mozzarella salad)

• about the taproom
• about the brewery and beer

Produce Row Cafe has 15 taps, over 200 bottled beers, and a full menu, including an abbreviated happy hour menu M-F 4-6PM. It's also a bit chilly when it's relatively empty. They offer wifi, pool, a huge deck, and that beer selection is pretty exciting. I just wish I was a bit more excited about the food. We tend to get burgers and fries, and the fries are great. The burger is just okay. They offer live music almost every night.

Slow Bar is a sophisticated small room, with some tall womblike booths, a comfie seating area, a couple tables, and of course, a lovely long bar which dominates the room. It can be smoky, but early on in the evening, it's not too bad for those of us who have given up the cancer sticks.

Originally, the focus at Slow Bar was hard alcohol, and I think it's fair to say that it's still important, but us beer drinkers have been recognized as well. Taps now include:

• Widmer
• Droptop Amber
• Deschutes Buzzsaw Brown
• Deschutes Mirror Pond Pale Ale
• Deschutes Inversion IPA
• Lagunitas Censored
• PBR
• Murphy's Irish Stout
• Pilsner Urquel
• Stella Artois
• Widmer Hefeweizen

In honor of the bar's heritage, I got a strawberry margarita, made with house infused tequila. Yum. The drink menu had prices from $5-$7.50.

The food menu is short, irreverent, and fairly inventive. I have to love a place that offers fries with "melted stinky cheese". They have appetizers ($3.50-$7), and other stuff like ceviche, pizzetta, pasta, and sandwiches ($5-9.50). A handful of the options are vegetarian, and another couple involve fish.

But the best part, really, is happy hour. 3-6pm. $2.50 off well drinks, $1 off beer.

Happy hour also has a short food menu, with prices ranging from $2.50-$5.50. That includes olives, spicy mixed nuts, hand cut fries (with or without stinky cheese), green salad, ceviche, asparagus tempura, southern fry, and 3 pizzettas.

We ordered a couple of southern fries (hushpuppies, buttermilk fried chicken, a spicy honey butter, and a dijon dipping sauce), a ceviche, and a plate of fries.

The southern fry ($7.50, or $5.50 happy hour) is not a huge plate, but there's enough artery-clogging food here to at least slow you down. The chicken is all white meat, and in tenders-like chunks, then batter-dipped and deep fried, and honestly, I felt like I was eating fancy chicken fingers. Which isn't a bad thing. The hushpuppies were a little leaden, but they were nicely made inhalable with the spicy honey butter.

The ceviche ($7.50, or $5 happy hour) was a success as well—nothing that would compare, say, with D.F. or Taqueria Neuve or Andina or Autentica, but tasty and generous. And the hand-cut fries ($4.50, or $2.50 happy hour) are just that. They're obviously hand-cut into small planks and single-fried, so they aren't crisp, but in spite that, they're really tasty.

And because everything on the happy hour menu seemed so cheap, we just kept ordering, and that is how we came to spend $35 on a happy hour meal. We had a great experience, however, and we'll be back.

The one weird thing is the music situation. They have a great punk rock jukebox, and they'd be playing something cool off it, and then suddenly some other "music" would cut in. WTF?

Other Press:
• Bar Fly
• Isaac Laquedem
• Portland Picks
• Willamette Week

CLOSED AS OF 10/11/2006

portland.craigslist.org/mlt/off/219395565.html

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October 17, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (2)