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Aalto Lounge
3356 SE Belmont St., 503-235-6041, aaltolounge.com. 5-7 pm daily.
[$2 EVERYTHING] At this Belmont Street den of sleek midcentury modernity and "bracing cocktails" (their words), and DJs spinning outlaw country and hip-hop, the absurdly generous happy-hour specials tend to draw couples looking for luxe a la cheapo. Two dollars will get you almost anything: a serrano-infused vodka pineapple cocktail, a lavender-cucumber gin cocktail, a Jell-O shot-flavored "Paloma," a pretzel with cheese or a grilled cheese sandwich. A tenner buys you an entire bottle of wine. And if you're feeling both fancy and friendly, there's a $12 bucket of four Weihenstephaners with your name on it. But be polite. The happy-hour menu is only available to "well-mannered, appropriately tipping customers." MARTIN CIZMAR.
Best deal: The $2 full-sized Belmont Jewel Cocktail—a mix of bourbon, lemon, pomegranate juice, and orange blossom water. It goes great with your $2 grilled cheese sandwich.
B-Side Tavern
632 E Burnside St., 503-233-3113. 4-7 pm daily.
[CHEAP, CRAPPY CANS] B-Side spans time like Vincent Gallo in a photo booth. Sure, the whiskey-tallboy rocker dive now has a few heat lamps on the smoking porch—which still has the approximate air quality of an emerging nation—and the tabletop graffiti gets cleaned up for a refresh every now and then. But you will still tell time with a clock depicting Ted Nugent's face while marking the three-hour "crappy hour," during which tallboys of Hamm's, Rainier and Tecate are a mere $1—one of the only daily dollar-beer specials in the entire city. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.
Best deal: $1 tallboys.
Bar Avignon
2138 SE Division St., 503-517-0808, baravignon.com. 5-6 pm Monday-Friday.
[SHELLS AND GRAPES] Wine bar and chicken expert Bar Avignon can get lost in the nouveau-Division sprawl—a shame, because it's home to beautiful house rabbit sausage and an estimable selection of wines on tap. The latter becomes very important at happy hour, when a selected white, red and rosé drop to $7 for a still-fancy pour, next to a $4 charcuterie of the day and $4 cheese of the day, not to mention a $2 oyster of the day and a buck off the cask beer of the day. It's like they're going out of their way to let you know that everything is always very carefully selected. Trust them. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.
Best deal: Anything shelled: $2 oysters, and $9 white-wine mussels that amount to half off. Also, the $7 gin-Campari-grapefruit cocktail is like a greyhound on steroids.
Bazi Bierbrasserie
1522 SE 32nd Ave., 503-234-8888, bazipdx.com. 3-7 pm and 10 pm-close Monday-Saturday, all day Sunday.
[BATTLE OF THE BELGIANS] Hilda Stevens' comfy spot isn't exclusively Belgian, but it is exceedingly well-curated—especially among the Belgian side of Oregon beer offerings, such as those from Pfriem, Upright and the Commons. If it's on tap here, it's good. Chances are, if it's on the food menu here, it's good, too—especially when the excellent, loaded-up burger drops to $6 alongside $6 Belgian mashed-potato stoemp. If you're afflicted with vegetarianism, Bazi is one of the few spots whose excellent lentil veg-burger is cheaper than the meat version: $5 cheap! MATTHEW KORFHAGE.
Best deal: Just get the burger, whether veggie ($5) or beef ($6), and God bless.
Belmont Inn
3357 SE Belmont St., 503-232-1998, belmontsinn.com. Drink specials 11 am-6 pm, food specials 3-6 pm daily.
[CHEAP QUESO] A defiant reminder of the area's rougher, readier, recent past, Belmont Inn's beer tap list has undergone sizable upgrades over the years, and the pool tables are well-maintained for the sort of guy who might strum a pool cue to Bruce Springsteen while his girlfriend rolls her eyes. Though not a sports bar, this is a bar that enjoys sports—a notable rarity amid the tastemaker zone—and for early games or UFC, well drinks are a mere $3 until 6 pm, select craft beers only $3.50. Cheap food doesn't start till 3, though—and includes dirt-cheap niceties like a $3 cheese-and-bean quesadilla, or a $6 burger that comes with a side of fries either straight or curly. JAY HORTON.
Best deal: Quesadillas—cheap to make or order. $3 gets you bean and cheese, $5 a loaded Southwestern.
Biwa
215 SE 9th Ave., 503-239-8830, biwarestaurant.com. 5-6 pm and 9-10 pm daily (9-11 pm Friday-Saturday).
[FOR RAMEN'S SAKE] It's rare that a happy-hour special involves a $10 drink—but at the counter, Biwa offers a very generous pour of premium sake. The one on offer recently was the terrific Rihaku junmai ginjo genshu, which started fruity and finished with some heat. Biwa's ramen has slipped a bit, but it's $5 at the counter at happy hour, as is the udon. But the $3 chashu add-on in that ramen? Best in town. No equal. BRIAN PANGANIBAN.
Best deal: $5 ramen is good. But $7 for a four-piece set of nigiri is a steal.
Cafe Castagna
1758 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 503-231-9959, castagnarestaurant.com. 5-6 pm and 9 pm-close Tuesday-Friday.
[$5 COCKTAILS] Portland's only true fine-dining restaurant—no supper club, no fried chicken, all tablecloth—also sports a cafe that might as well be a burger joint between 5 and 6 pm. Sure, there are $2 oysters and $7 crisped duck-fat potatoes, brightly acidic pickled vegetables available for $2 and a generous $5 cocktail and $6 wine menu bolstering $4 craft drafts. But that burger is a revelation—made startlingly light, despite all the beef, by the bright acidity and pleasing crunch of some of the city's finest housemade pickles. You might catch yourself thinking about it sometimes during the golden hour right before twilight, when the world looks more beautiful than it should. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.
Best deal: $8 burger. $5 "snoop" Negroni variant with gin, Campari and grapefruit.
Clarklewis
1001 SE Water Ave., 503-235-2294, clarklewispdx.com. 4:30-6:30 pm Monday-Saturday.
[DAIQUIRI SPOT] Sitting at Clarklewis' Water Avenue-facing stone-slab counter before the dinner rush, you truly feel like the only person in the room—the best person to be at a nice restaurant. This privacy is welcome while you contemplate the 12-item happy-hour menu, which offers dishes ranging from $1 nuts to a $6 halloumi cheese plate to $7 grilled venison ribs. Beer is still expensive at $6.50—but wine is $6, and so is a hand-shaken daiquiri. SOPHIA JUNE.
Best deal: Consider this: A pepper-bacon cheeseburger at Burgerville is $6.29. Clarklewis' happy-hour, maple-wood-grilled hamburger is $7—down from $13—and this is for a slightly charred, fatty burger served on a wheat bun with greens, pickled red onion and mustard aioli. Pay an extra buck for blue cheese, and eat like you mean it.
Conquistador
2045 SE Belmont St., 503-232-3227. 4-7 pm daily.
[VELVETERIA] Conquistador has the best bar nachos in the city of Portland. There are quirkier renditions, bigger ones and cheaper ones. But for the money, and for your taste buds—with five different salsas to choose, Mexican white cheese on top and fresh, warm chips as a base for an ungodly array of non-meat toppings—your heaven is here, in a bar devoted to free jukeboxes, smoking on the patio and ironic appreciations of velvet Spaniards. At happy hour, you can get poquito nachos that are still grande for a mere $6.50, along with drinks so cheap it'll break your heart: $2 Pabst, $3 craft beers, $5 cava and $3.25 well cocktails—not to mention $6 margaritas. Play shuffleboard or pool while you wait. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.
Best deal: $6.50 happy-hour nachos will feed you and a friend.
Coopers Hall
404 SE 6th Ave., 503-719-7000, coopershall.com. 4-6 pm Monday-Saturday.
[$7 WINE BOTTLES] When Coopers Hall opened as an airplane hangar for wine—a winery and cidery and barrelhouse and home to more wines on tap than maybe anywhere in the country—it was in danger of feeling cold, impersonal. But it doesn't. There's schmaltz on that bread (both figuratively and literally—you should order it), and a warm bar staff that cares about what it serves. Food costs even at happy hour ($11 burger, $4 olive plate), but there's a $5 house wine for every palate—red, white, rosé or sparkler, plus $2 Rainier for dad and $4 crafts. But the real deal? Check out those bottle discounts on wine to go. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.
Best deal: At happy hour, there are refillable to-go bottles of locally made table wine you can buy for $7. It's like you're in Italy or some shit.
Dots Cafe
2521 SE Clinton St., 503-235-0203, dotscafeportland.com. 2-7 pm and 11 pm-1 am Monday-Friday.
[DINER BURLESQUE] If aliens, Elvis and Marie Antoinette opened a diner, it might look like Dots. The walls are lined with black-and-white damask wallpaper, oil paintings of Elizabethan royalty, screenshots of Spock, and Warhol prints. The happy-hour menu is just about as nuts. A cool $4 will get you a nacho plate big enough for two with guac and pico or a Thai chicken skewer. A buck more will get you a plate of wings, apparently a house specialty. ENID SPITZ.
Best deal: $3.50 wells, $3.50 select craft brews, $4 nachos.
Double Barrel
2002 SE Division St., 503-234-1420. 2-7 pm Friday, all day Sunday.
[ONE-BARREL BURGER] One of the spate of newish bars in Southeast Portland working a Wild West theme, Double Barrel looks like what would happen if some intrepid developer airlifted the haberdashery from The Hateful Eight into the heart of New Division, cleaning up the bloodstains and installing pinball machines and a big screen to watch sports on, while keeping the place just grimy enough to maintain a vague "you might get shot over a card game here" vibe. In short, it walks the fine line between obvious contrivance and unforced authenticity needed to pull off the old-time thing. Boasting perhaps the neighborhood's widest selection of swill, the joint is pretty cheap to begin with, and at happy hour the pints and wells are only 50 cents off. But the excellent, no-frills Single Barrel burger drops to $5, which is reason enough to mosey on over for a tall can of Oly and hours of concussion-ball on Sunday, when the cheapness lasts all day. MATTHEW SINGER.
Best deal: Not in a burger mood? The chicken wings are $6.
Double Dragon
1235 SE Division St., 503-230-8340, doubledragonpdx.com. 4-6 pm Monday-Friday.
[MEAL DEALS] Unobtrusively cool nighttime hang Double Dragon, one of the few decent bars on Division Street despite being a restaurant, has recently updated its happy-hour menu from burger-and-dog-and-tallboy specials to include one of the more solid happy-hour cocktail menus in town. Its vodka-lemongrass Telephone Line ($6 at happy hour) is made with house pho bitters, while the $6 happy-hour "Really Good Daiquiri" lives heartily up to its name. The masterpiece on the drink menu costs more—but at $8, the frothy tequila-mezcal-genepy Summer Babe (Winter Version) is well worth the upgrade. The banh mis and rice bowls drop a couple bucks to $8 and $6, respectively—but I gotta say, I miss that beautiful happy-hour kimchi hot dog. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.
Best deal: $6 daiquiri.
EastBurn
1800 E Burnside St., 503-236-2876, theeastburn.com. 3-6 pm daily.
[HAPPY HOUR ROULETTE] EastBurn is like a bar with hidden levels—especially because it literally has a hidden level downstairs filled with skee ball and Pac-Man. But there's always a rare beer you didn't know about on tap or a goofball deal you'd have no reason to expect, like $2 off whiskey on Wednesday and $2.50 craft pints on Tuesday—and $3.50 craft pints during happy hour, for that matter, not to mention $3 off specialty cocktails. And during the NBA playoffs, the bar tosses out free beers when the Blazers eclipse 100 points. Every hour is happy, perhaps—but only at random. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.
Best deal: Those $2.50 pints on Tuesdays.
Foster Burger
5339 SE Foster Road, 503-775-2077, fosterburger.com. 3-5:30 pm daily.
[BEEFY BEEF] Foster Burger's happy hour caters to exactly what you want—$1 off burgers, $1 off a side of fries, and $2 PBR tallboys. This means you can have a mean meal for just $8, compared to the usual $11. This is price exclusivity at its finest. While other happy-hour spots mark down their burgers to $6 or $7, Foster gives you a $5 burger that's worth it. Trust us, it's worth the drive and having to suck down a room-temperature PBR tallboy. SOPHIA JUNE.
Best deal: Get the double burger ($6.50) with a side of fries ($2).
Gold Dust Meridian
3267 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 503-239-1143, golddustmeridian.com. 2-8 pm daily, all day Sunday.
[CHEESE AND BALLS] Gold Dust's front patio is oddly popular given all the traffic on Hawthorne, but you'll find us under the teakwood roof, probably sitting on the long banquette, where the red-hued light is flattering and the generous happy hour runs until 8 pm, even on Saturday: 50 cents off already-cheap wells and drafts, and a generous $5 Caesar salad and $6 crabcakes. But it's all about the $6 mac and cheese paired with the $5 meatballs for a lesson in decadence. Do we miss the happy-hour clams, though? Yes. We miss the happy-hour clams. MARTIN CIZMAR.
Best deal: $3.50 beer, $5 meatballs, $6 mac and cheese. Fin.
Kachka
720 SE Grand Ave., 235-0059, kachkapdx.com. 4-6 pm, 10 pm-midnight daily.
[NA ZDOROVIE] After 10 pm since this June or so, Kachka has become one of the very best bars in a neighborhood of bars. Late and early, it now serves a world of vodka accompaniments that includes a self-consciously named $12 drinking board named after Bonnie's dad Slava and packed with cured meats and cheese and pickles, plus treats on the cheap from $2 fish jerky to $5 mussels. The justly famous Siberian pelmeni dumplings drop, meanwhile, from $13 to $9. All of these things pair quite well with a $5 Moscow mule or a $9 hundred-milliliter serving (about three 1-ounce shots) of house-infused vodka from horseradish to sea buckthorn berry to cacao nib or dill. Life is good, here. And drunk. And good. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.
Best deal: You will not drink cheaper better than with 100 milliliters of the horseradish vodka for $9.
La Moule
2500 SE Clinton St., 971-339-2822, lamoulepdx.com. 5-6 pm, 10 pm-midnight daily.
[MUSSEL BEACH] Like countless bars in Belgium and Canada, La Moule is a dim, drunky spot devoted to mussels and frites—a '70s disco-blue, amber-lit room featuring an aging, disheveled, black-eyed and big-collared Serge Gainsbourg portrait and deco wallpaper that looks like mussel shells split open to form a series of hearts—it makes the whole place look like a valentine made of bivalves. At late-night happy hour, you can get the mussels for $10—in slightly smaller form than the voluminous $17 dish—alongside a $7 Old Fashioned and $5 rosé. If you're not looking to drink much, there are also $2 half pints of Bavik Pilsner. But a note? Get the pork rinds. Always get the pork rinds. They are the size of a love letter, fluffy and covered in espelette pepper. And they're $3 at happy hour. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.
Best deal: $5 rosé, $10 mussels, $3 pork rinds.
Muddy Rudder Public House
8105 SE 7th Ave., 503-233-4410, muddyrudderpdx.com. 4-6 pm daily.
[OAKS PARK BLUES] Tucked away between the Sellwood New Seasons and Riverfront Park is Muddy Rudder, a blues-happy pub filled with personal pizzas, middle-aged folks on Match.com dates and a shaded patio with green wooden benches out back. There's a good chance you'll mistake it for a McMenamins, even if you're not a tourist. The happy hour food menu is simple: cheese pizza, soup and salad, half-sandwich with soup or salad, bruschetta and chickpea salad, all $6.75, and pints are $3.75. SOPHIA JUNE.
Best deal: A $3.75 pint and a $6.75 cheese pizza easily serves two. Skip the bruschetta, which comes out soggy.
My Father's Place
523 SE Grand Ave., 503-235-5494, myfathersplacepdx.com. 4-6 pm and 10 pm-midnight Monday-Friday, breakfast special 6-10 am.
[THE REAL CHEAPNESS] Although the Central Eastside Industrial District's dive bar of record welcomes a wide swath of well-wishers throughout the day, first call attracts an especially diverse scrum for unofficial sunrise service, split evenly between retirees seeking eye-openers and drinkers still awake from the night before—all can get a $5.75 special with two eggs, bacon, sausage and toast. Drinks are always cheap, but in the afternoon you can eat for nothing: Among a dirt-cheap menu, there are $2 pulled-pork sliders and chicken sliders and fries that will help buoy you through a long afternoon of $1.50 Pabst and $3 wells and craft drafts. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.
Best deal: A stiff gin and tonic and a $2 pulled-pork slider with fries. Only $5 poorer, and the day already feels much different.
Night Light Lounge
2100 SE Clinton St., 731-6500, nightlightlounge.net/home. 2-7 pm Monday-Friday, 3-7 pm Saturday-Sunday, 11 pm-1 am daily.
[NACHO TOWER] The place famous for (briefly) hanging a painting depicting Adolf Hitler wearing a "Make America Great Again" baseball cap is also one of Southeast's best late-night happy-hour spots—although on a late Tuesday, the only other customer might be a man in a cowboy hat spewing a monologue to the bartender about how jazz saved his life even as a "white boy." But PBR is $1.50 a pint, french fries are a mere $2, and $6 salads and nachos are enough to feed a table of three. And even though Hitler is gone, the bar did sport a painting of a cute cat licking itself—a biological act turned erotic with the artist's decision to blur the kitty's private area. SOPHIA JUNE.
Best deal: The $6 nachos, which look about a full foot high and are layered hot with guacamole, jalapeños, green and red onion, pico de gallo, sour cream and black olives. Wash it all down with a $1.50 pint of PBR.
North Bar
5008 SE Division St., 503-546-9973, northbarpdx.com. 3-7 pm daily.
[BAR BITES] North is where you end up when you venture east enough on Division Street to pass all the bougie taco spots. The bar is a no-nonsense, Goodwill-art-decorated, Cascadia-flag-waving neighborhood watering hole. Happy hour is just as no-nonsense, with several food items for $2: quesadilla consisting entirely of cheddar in tortilla triangles, basic hummus and pita, chips and salsa, green salad, and bare-bones nachos with melted cheese and salsa. Drafts and well drinks are $1 off—and PBR is a cool $1.50. SOPHIA JUNE.
Best deal: $1 PBR all day Tuesday, and $5 margaritas every day at happy hour from the bar's slushie machine.
Nostrana
1401 SE Morrison St., 503-234-2427, nostrana.com. 9 pm-close nightly.
The late-night happy hour at O.C.-vibed Nostrana is perhaps Portland's most perfect locale for socially ambitious cheapskates, with the famous pizzas only $7 if you're cool with unadorned margheritas and marinaras, the pasta al forno an equally cheap $7, and a mini-charcuterie plate for $5. The gin comes with housemade tonic for $5 as well—no irritating $2.50 upcharge for Fever Tree as at many houses of fancy tonic—and house wines are the same $5. If you don't let your date see the menu, he'll think you're fancy. If you do, she'll think you're shrewd. Either way, you win. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.
Best deal: The house red and a margherita pizza make a great $12 meal deal.
Rontoms
600 E Burnside St., 503-236-4536, rontoms.net. 3-6:30 pm daily.
[BACK-DECK LOVERS] Rontoms, once prized for its retro stylings, now looks oddly dated, the vintage record player housing the water looking like a relic of another time. The huge bar space is now sort of a front for the back patio, where the real action is. Visit during happy hour between May and October, and pretty much every social demographic under age 40 is gathered out back. Traveling oceanographers? Check. Wieden+Kennedy account managers? Check. Two bros monopolizing the pingpong table? Double check. They're all here for sunshine, but Rontoms' dollar-off spirits are buoyed by $4.50 food items, including a French dip sandwich, chicken skewers, Caesar salad, and quite good jackfruit tacos. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.
Best deal: The filler on the menu is the classic. For $4.50, you're full of grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup. Mmmm mmmm, good.
Rum Club
720 SE Sandy Blvd., 503-265-8807, rumclubpdx.com. 4-6 pm daily.
[A REAL PEACH] The horseshoe-shaped African mahogany bar surrounded by long-legged chairs totally dominates the floor plan at this little nook. All the better to grab a seat and watch the bartenders at work. Though the menu is rum-happy and loosely tropical—it opened as the casual little sister of the long-departed Beaker & Flask—of late it's gotten more mileage out of bourbon and muscat brandy. But at happy hour, the manly men drink the Hemingway daiquiri, a $6 drink for the sweet-tongued and hardhearted made of aged light rum, grapefruit, lime, demerara syrup and maraschino. But the real gem on that happy-hour menu is a Bolivian take on the Andean chilcano. The drink is usually made with the similar pisco liquor of Peru and Chile, but Rum Club mixes in the more floral Bolivian muscat-grape liquor Singani with lime and ginger beer for a singular $6 refreshment. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.
Best deal: $6 chilcano, $5 daily punch, or a $5 gin and tonic with much better tonic than you're used to.
Sapphire Hotel
5008 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 503-232-6333, thesapphirehotel.com. 4-6 daily, 10-close Sunday-Thursday.
[HAUTE AND HAPPY] The Sapphire is a lover's haven. The low-lit bar is tucked behind a framing store at the end of Hawthorne and populated by two-seater tables, decorated with red velvet curtains and gold enamel wall murals. Cheap $6 hummus mezza aside, this is not the place for after-work beers with your bros. But if you want to make a classy date cheap (in the best way), the five-spice chicken skewers decorated with sambal and a honey tamari sauce are only $6 and pair perfectly with a $5 red wine. The late-night happy hour runs on school nights only, but maybe it's not a terrible idea to take a third date here early on Friday and finally see them in daylight. ENID SPITZ.
Best deal: $6 chicken skewers and a $2 Pabst or $6 specialty cocktail.
Slingshot Lounge
5532 SE Center St., 503-445-6649. 3-7 pm Monday-Friday.
[HAIL THE CAESAR] The corner of Southeast 56th Avenue and Foster Road consists mainly of the Gun Room and a waft of pot from Foster Buds. But in the shadow of an "Anyone Can Get Addicted to Pain Pills" billboard lies happy-hour oasis Slingshot Lounge, a true neighborhood watering hole with surprisingly good, cheap food. There's not even a spot at the bar to sit in the low-lit room near the end of happy hour, which offers seven $3-to-$5 snacks, including a $4 Caesar salad piled high with Parmesan cheese and crunchy homemade croutons, and a $3 basket of fries big enough for three. Drafts and wells are a buck off at $4 and $3, respectively—and the wells are stiff. SOPHIA JUNE.
Best deal: $1 pint of Olympia and $3 for so many fries.
Slow Bar
533 SE Grand Ave., 503-230-7767, slowbar.net. 3-6 pm Monday-Friday, midnight-2:30 am Sunday-Thursday.
[EPIC BURGERS] This is an unlikely home for Portland's most celebrated pub burger. A proud survivor of an earlier iteration of Portland glam, Slow Bar is a den of nightlifers reading the newspaper in the dim, red lighting that I associate with places like Amsterdam and Prince's powder room. But none of that decadence can compare to the Slowburger, normally $11 for a Beacon Rock-sized column of ground chuck, Gruyere and onion rings that tastes like the Oxford English Dictionary needed more definitive examples of the concepts "fat" and "melt." At happy hour, you can get a kimchi-and-kale version—still 6 ounces of beef—for a mere $5. Also only $5 is a cocktail bowl of ceviche and chips, a generous iceberg wedge smothered in blue cheese and bacon, and any of three different pairs of sliders that include albacore. AARON MESH.
Best deal: $5 burger, $1.50 fries, $5.50 Duchesse de Bourgogne always on tap.
Southeast Wine Collective
2425 SE 35th Place, 503-208-2061, sewinecollective.com.
4-6 pm Monday and Wednesday-Friday, 1-3 pm Saturday-Sunday.
[URBAN GRAPES] Is it possible for the city's best-loved wine bar to be underrated? Not only has Tom Monroe and Kate Norris' wine collective been an incubator for some of the best wines in town—including, especially, the co-founders' own Division Winemaking—but the bar itself is a worthy showcase. And at happy hour, not only do you get $2 off a glass of wine, but also off the already-generous flights. You can get an all-too-familiar pinot noir flight ($13), but don't. Go for the "surprise" flight—equally likely to tap a lovely Basque Txakolina as a first-vintage chardonnay from natural-wine up-and-comer Statera, or a truly singular syrah from Norris' own Gamine imprint. Althea Grey Potter's fine small-plates menu drops a buck at happy hour as well. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.
Best deal: The $10 tap-wine flight drops to $8 for three half-glasses. How nice.
Star Bar
639 SE Morrison St., 503-232-5553, star-bar-rocks.com. 4-8 pm daily.
[TOT'CHO CITY] An urban sanctuary composed of hair metal and cheap happy-hour sliders, Star Bar seems explicitly designed to piss off people who don't like to mix their whiskey with Whitesnake—right down to the deadpan homage to Big Star's #1 Record with which it shamelessly brands its windows. At happy hour, beneath velvet paintings of panthers, you can imbibe the mighty tater-tot variant of nacho—the tot'cho—for a mere $4. A hamburger stuffed with blue cheese will enter your body for $6. And craft beer—often very good craft beer—is a mere $3.50. Wine is $5, but if you're drinking wine here you're wrong in multiple ways we shouldn't need to point out. JAMES HELMSWORTH.
Best deal: Tot'chos and a pint of Pabst, together at last for a mere $6.
Trifecta
726 SE 6th Ave., 503-841-6675, trifectapdx.com, 5-6 pm Monday-Thursday, 4-6 pm Friday and Sunday, 4-5 pm Saturday.
[FAT HEAVEN] Every day except dishonest Friday and Sunday—when your time window inexplicably doubles—happy hour is one hour only, the first hour Trifecta is open. But it is enough time to fulfill your entire calorie quota for the day by eating a $10 pimento cheeseburger—oozing and monstrous and double-stacked with both patties and cheeses in a thick bun that simply can't compete with the protein-packed salt and fat of the thing. Combine that with a $6 Old Fashioned, Sazerac or Negroni, and you are either off to a hell of a start on your weekend or in a Monday food coma that will take you straight home. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.
Best deal: You're here for the burger and the cocktail. Get the burger and the cocktail.
Victory Bar
3652 SE Division St., 503-236-8755, thevictorybar.com. 5-6 pm daily, 10-11 pm Sunday-Thursday.
[BIG BROTHER POUTINE] Victory Bar remains steadfastly unchanged in Division Street Disneyland, its Orwellian Big Brother decor all the more poignant and ironic among the new crop of multiuse towers. Because why fuck with a good thing? The beer selection rivals any local beer bar in curation, a buck cheaper from 5 to 6 pm. Meanwhile, the food happy hour makes no sense and doesn't have to. You've got three choices. All American backcountry is served by a big, juicy venison burger. A West Coast take on Canadian poutine is offered by a bacon-cheddar-slathered mess of fries. And Germans will be sated by the housemade spaetzle. But the food's cheap at funny times: from 5 to 6 pm and 10 to 11 pm only. At midnight it costs more, because who wants to encourage you to dirty up the kitchen that late?
Best deal: $3.75 wells, $4 select craft pints and $6.75 for an unholy wealth of cheese-and-bacon-covered fries dirtier than any bomb.
Welcome to the 2016 Happy Hour Guide
SW Portland Happy Hours | SE Portland Happy Hours | N/NE Portland Happy Hours | NW Portland Happy Hours
Ridiculously Cheap Deals for Every Day of the Week: Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday
32 Places to Get a Beer for Less Than $2
Top 5 Happy Hour Burgers Under $5
Five Cocktails You Can Get For $5 Or Less
Here's Where to Get Happy Hour Deals All Day—From 7-1 AM
Five Ways to do Happy Hour Nachos
Where to Get the Best Happy Hour Oysters
Willamette Week