Two Happy Hours to Fill Your Belly

I've talked about happy hours before and the focus has been on how inexpensive one can purchase a beer, a good craft beer, for. While I still love being able to spend a mere $2 or $2.50, I recently visited two places suggested by and with a friend. Although these places don't offer discounts on the beer the happy hour food is spectacularly priced. And it's not "cheap food" but really tasty food and not the two-little-bits-on-a-plate variety either.

The first is tucked away in NW Portland, tucked away at least for this SE dweller. Rae's Lakeview offers happy hour daily 3 - 6 pm with the only beer special being $1 bottles of Miller High Life. The happy hour food menu however boasts 16 options all priced $2 - $5, including a cheeseburger and Croque Monsieur for $5 each or biscuits & gravy for a mere $2. On our first visit we ordered and shared a majority of the offerings and on my last visit I had to give the biscuits and gravy a try. I found all of them to be tasty and enough of a bargain to offset the non-discounted beer prices (about $5 each).

The second, while not tucked away, is located in a restaurant and bar heavy area. One might walk or drive by it a dozen times without even thinking about stopping in. The place, Jake's Famous Crawfish, is a part of the McCormick & Schmick's family of restaurants but that doesn't mean they don't offer a hellava happy hour food menu. Their happy hour, also 3 - 6 pm daily, has dishes that range from $2.95 - $5.95. I can't speak to as many of these dishes mainly because the Northwest Seafood & Sausage Gumbo that I ordered and the Jake's Cheeseburger that Mag ordered turned out to be full sized meals. And they were only $3.95 each. Oh yeah, did I mention that the Tillamook cheese-topped burger was accompanied by a mound of French fries? Well, it is. The beers were similarly priced to Rae's ($5 - $6) and again, the delicious, filling food at rock bottom prices offset the full priced beers.

Finally, while we're on the topic, a quick reminder that for inexpensive beer, and only slightly higher happy hour food prices, there's the White Owl Social Club in SE. If you missed my post about it last month you can check out all the details here. Are there other places with similar happy hours I should be checking out?