My continuing search for bargain eats has brought me to the sad realization that my husband and I, tethered to jobs with unconventional hours, have spent years missing out on the cheapskate’s best source for budget food: happy hours.
Bargain booze and enough well-priced snacks to make a meal–what more could a person ask for? Well, for the food and the booze to be good. That is a more difficult order to fill, particularly if one is also hoping for a convivial atmosphere and decent service.
Even the frugal don’t want to be treated cheaply, but how much can patrons reasonably expect a restaurant or bar to give away? It’s tricky work balancing loss leaders with hoped-for volume, customer upgrading, and potential return visits for full-price lunches and dinners. What follows is a curated list of restaurants with happy hours offering decent food at bargain prices, along with one place that features daylong specials a few times a week.
Let’s start with that one place. Sabor Latino’s Taco Tuesday came recommended by a friend whose family has so integrated the restaurant into its weekly habits that her husband is confounded when she ditches the routine to come to our ladies’ card night. Usually Tuesday evening means same place, same time, same choices for each of them. And with tacos $1 a piece and a Corona $2.50, we have a clear rival to my gold standard for bargain lunches: the $1 tamales at Dos Hermanos in Ypsilanti.
I joined my friend’s family at Sabor Latino one Tuesday evening. The North Main St. restaurant was hopping, and we had to wait, but, once we were seated, things moved quickly. Our waitress plunked down complimentary chips and salsa (only the first basket is free; additionals are $1.50 each), and we altered their routine with a couple of shots of tequila, one silver, one aged ($2 each). Sabor Latino offers traditional soft-shell tacos with a choice of protein or vegetable, cilantro, and onion; or hard shell with added beans, lettuce, sour cream, and cheese. The hard shells aren’t the supermarket variety–they’re freshly fried, and both they and the soft ones are generous and tasty. We ventured beyond the family’s standing order, savoring special spicy chicken tacos, along with pork done in both the crispy, roasted carnitas and fruity al pastor style, shredded fish, and roasted vegetable. The four of us were out the door for less than $25, including tip.
Less alliterative, less well known, and less tasty is the restaurant’s Quesadilla Thursday. I visited one evening about 5:30, and the place was empty. The $1.50 quesadillas were limp shells, barely plumped with filling. Additions–cilantro, onion, peppers, etc.–cost 50c to $1 each. I’m not a fan of Cuba Libres (rum and Cokes), even at $3, though I might have enjoyed one of the special $2.50 rum shots. At Sabor Latino, I’ll stick to Tuesdays and tacos.
My friends and I might have spent more at Sabor Latino if we hadn’t already checked out the Black Pearl, three blocks south on Main St. Their happy hour is more traditional (Mon.-Fri. 5-6 p.m., Thurs.-Sat. 11 p.m.-2 a.m., Sun. 8 p.m.-midnight). Beverage selections on the special menu include limited beer and wine choices and a few special cocktails (several sounded too syrupy to me, though perhaps not for the younger set). For edibles, the emphasis is on seafood.
We enjoyed the St. Gin–a gin, lemon, lime, and St. Germain concoction ($7)–and coconut shrimp ($4), although opinions differed on its honey-lime dipping sauce. The fried fish tacos ($4 each), heaped with slaw, chipotle mayo, and salsa, were appetizing, but the crab Rangoon ($4) was dull. Pommes frites ($5) proved to be just a generous portion of standard fries; the fried clams ($6) were similarly plain but plentiful. Best and quite substantial was the Pasta Gone Bayou ($7), a Louisiana-inspired medley of seafood, chicken, andouille sausage, and penne pasta in a creamy garlic sauce. It would have been a perfect light dinner if accompanied by a small salad, sadly not on the happy hour menu.
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Another night two friends and I went bar hopping, restaurant style. We began at the Gandy Dancer, where happy hour (Mon.-Fri. 3:30-6:30 p.m.) occurs only in the saloon and on the patio of the spectacular former train station on Depot St. With a menu featuring a range of decent beverage choices from $3 to $6 and “bites” from $4 to $6, it would be easy to settle into the cozy bar and enjoy an early dinner. Over the next hour the room filled up and plates filled the tables, including ours. We sampled but couldn’t finish–more happy hours beckoned–crispy, flavorful mushroom flatbread ($5); heavily battered, moist cod fingers ($5); four plump, luscious “firecracker popper” shrimp ($6); substantial blue-cheeseburger sliders with fries ($6); and steamed mussels ($6), beautifully arranged and presented if a tad overcooked and cold. Scads of food, three generous glasses of wine, and a $40 tab before tax and tip–not a price to be sneezed at.
From there we headed downtown to happy hour at Lena (Mon.-Fri. 4-6 p.m.), at Main and Liberty. Five-dollar mojitos and margaritas, along with sangria, aren’t to be sneezed at either, particularly the fine ones stirred up at Lena’s bar. The many food options all list for $5 too, and are quite lavish, from fresh-tasting guacamole to a trio of pork tacos, well stuffed with braised meat and crunchy slaw. Three towering sliders–beef or Cuban (ham and pulled pork)–add up to a good-sized sandwich, and the quality of the ingredients is noteworthy. However, the evening’s ceviche–dry, hefty cubes of fish that didn’t look or taste as if they’d seen a lick of citrus, tossed with chunks of watermelon and radish–remained essentially untouched. Next time I’ll try the chipitas, cheese-stuffed tapioca bread, or baked goat cheese.
We landed finally at The Earle, perhaps Ann Arbor’s longest-running fine dining happy hour (in the bar only, Mon.-Fri., 5-8 p.m.). Years ago, when I first arrived in town, patrons could get a free bowl of mussels during happy hour. Eventually the restaurant instituted a modest charge, and it has risen slowly over time to its recent price of $3.75 (available only 5-6:30 p.m.). Still, with some bread and a salad, those mussels are a light, delicious supper, especially considering the wine one can enjoy with it. Whereas many places offer only limited dishes, well liquor, and jug wine for happy hour, the Earle takes 20 percent off all the bar menu’s food and most beverages by the glass. And the Earle pours better glasses than many and prices them better than most. The happy hour concept is so well integrated into their bar scene that the menu exhibits both the happy hour and the regular prices for the mathematically challenged. But beyond those mussels and beverages, even a 20 percent discount here doesn’t bring much of the food into the category of cheap eats, though soups and salads range from $2.35 to $7.95 and personal pizzas, along with some sandwiches, cost $7.95.
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The next week my two hardy volunteers and I began early on Main St. at Felix Bistro and Bar (Mon.-Fri. 3-6 p.m., Mon.- Sat. 10 p.m.-close, and all day Tues.). One-dollar raw oysters had attracted me, though my comrades were less excited. (One friend worries about eating seafood too far from the shore, and the other, who tried her first oyster that night, wasn’t convinced she need ever do that again.) As it was, that evening’s East Coast variety was fresh though surprisingly insipid; still, I managed to eat several. Better was the prosciutto and artichoke pizza and glasses of French white wine, both $6.50, half their usual cost.
Next, we headed out to the Quarter Bistro (bar only, Mon.-Sat. 3-7:30 p.m.). Though it was still early, the place was lively, and it only grew busier the longer we stayed. Next to the Westgate shopping center with plenty of parking, the Bistro appears to be the watering hole where baby boomers have begun their retirement, driven out of downtown by millennials.
But whereas the millennials favor fancy cocktails to drown their sorrows, the boomers seem content with the Bistro’s cheap (in cost and quality) happy hour booze. Or perhaps the irresistible draw is the Quarter Bistro’s special menu, inexpensive ($5 a plate) and bountiful. The restaurant clearly anticipates the crowd with plenty of staff and quick service, both from the bar and the kitchen. Along with our drinks, the bartender presented complimentary hummus and the hot, soft Chuck Muer bread favored by so many local restaurants. Moments later, she returned with our orders. The score was one hit and three misses–an overflowing bowl of delicate, tasty mussels in Cajun cream, an equally enormous bowl of undistinguished fried calamari, an equally forgettable duo of fish tacos, and a plate of bready Spanish shrimp cakes. We could barely make a dent in what we ordered. Those with little money but big, forgiving appetites could do well here.
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A little further west, in Scio Township, the Carlyle Grill (bar only, Sun.-Thurs. 3-7 p.m., Fri. & Sat. 3-6 p.m.) attracts a similarly suburban crowd, though with a decent sprinkling of younger people. I went alone one evening near the end of happy hour and snagged the last seat. Most of the people around me were clearly ordering their dinner off the happy hour menu, but while my glass of pinot noir ($3) was pleasant, I found the food uninspiring. The Greek salad ($6), a mountain of chopped lettuce weighted down by a hefty wedge of feta, a few hothouse vegetables, and an avalanche of olives and pepperoncini, proved impossible to eat. The $5 chef’s tacos–that evening, steak–looked and tasted like an afterthought, as did the $5 seasonal chef’s feature, chicken tostados. Another ten items remained untried, but the bar’s popularity suggests there must be something good to eat.
I had much better luck one late afternoon at Carlyle’s sister restaurant, Mediterrano, in the Concord Center on S. State St. and Eisenhower (at the bar only, Mon.-Fri. 4-7 p. m.). Nearly empty on that Monday evening, the room shone genially in the winter sunlight. Again, the beverage selections are limited, but my glass of dry Riesling ($5) was lovely. I hadn’t eaten much lunch and dug eagerly into the perfectly fried pile of tender calamari ($7), paired with a dense, jumbo crab cake ($7), whose sauce was particularly delicious. I could barely finish. At last, I had found that happy place in a happy hour where plentiful good food, good drink, and good prices meet.
