These are the Best Happy Hours in North and Northeast Portland

The Alibi

4024 N Interstate Ave., 503-287-5335, alibiportland.com. 3-7 pm daily.

[AFTERNOON SEX ON THE BEACH] Like the Old Vegas bars it most closely resembles, the best time to visit this storied tiki lounge is midday, when the world outside is bright and the house's syrupy-sweet renditions of tiki classics like the zombie and mai tai feel more like candy and less like an impending headache. Crawl into a cushy booth and let yourself be transported—with the aid, perhaps, of a $5 mai tai or Sex on the Beach, plus a kalua pork plate or full burger basket for the hilariously low price of $5.95. When karaoke starts, it's time to bounce. MARTIN CIZMAR.

Best deal: Were you considering getting something other than the $5 mai tai? A $3 well drink perhaps? A $2 Pabst? You're no fun.

Altabira

1021 NE Grand Ave., Suite 600, 503-963-3600, altabira.com. 4-6 pm daily.

[BURGER WITH A VIEW] Atop midscale, midcentury-modern Hotel Eastlund you'll find a beery pub called Altabira, formerly home to a Red Lion Hotel pub called Windows. The windows are still the best feature. You have an incredible view of downtown from the modernist steel patio furniture at this spacious bar, which also boasts a long list of localish beers and a pretty decent bistro burger with white cheddar and caramelized onions on brioche. But get it and a $6 Moscow Mule only during happy hour—the hike on that burger is steep after 6 pm, rising from $7 to $14. MARTIN CIZMAR.

Best deal: The $7 burger and $6 Moscow Mule.

Aviary

1733 NE Alberta St., 503-287-2400, aviarypdx.com. 5-7 pm weekdays.

[HOTTEST DOG] Aviary's happy hour—perhaps because the bar itself is tucked behind the restaurant—remains one of Portland's best-hidden secrets. Oysters are a respectable $2.50, sure, but put your money on the $7 slaw dog. Does $7 not feel cheap for a hot dog? Order the damn thing, and discover the city's best frankfurter—an Olympia Provisions sausage that has been smoked in house to bring out a torrent of meat flavor. Other treats include tempura green beans or a truly excellent duck liver pâté on toast for $5. But seriously: Order the hot dog and a $3 craft draft and you are the happiest motherfucker on Alberta Street. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.

Best deal: $3 craft beer and a $7 hot dog that's worth it.

Bar Bar

3939 N Mississippi Ave., 503-288-3895, mississippistudios.com/bar-bar. 11 am-4 pm (bloody marys and margaritas) and 4-6 pm daily.

[BLOODY ON THE PATIO] Some may be tempted to dismiss Bar Bar as a means to an end, a burger-and-tallboy baby sibling to North Portland concert hall Mississippi Studios. But consider treating it as a destination in its own right—a patio bar with a laid-back atmosphere less suited to making new friends than meeting old ones.

The burgers are a $6 during hours happy or not, but during happy ones drafts, wells and house cocktails drop a buck, and Pabst is dive-bar priced at $2. Show up anytime before happy hour and the discounts stick to margs and bloodies, each $1 off. GRACE CULHANE.

Best deal: $4 wells and $3.50 La Bomba tecate michelada—and that always-cheap, always-welcome $6 burger.

Beulahland

118 NE 28th Ave., 503-235-2794, beulahlandpdx.com. 4-7 pm daily.

[QUEENS MANHATTAN] Beulahland is a neighborhood punk-rock and Timbers-fan clearing house that recently changed up its happy hour completely to offer what may be the cheapest drink in Portland to call itself a Manhattan—it's $4, served up alongside a $4 martini, a $4 kamikaze, and other $4 rotators that might include housemade ginger soda and a host of muddled limes. If you think that's a fancy way of saying they don't upcharge their $4 happy hour wells to make fancy-sounding shit out of them, well, you're absolutely right. But it's downright neighborly of them not to. Otherwise, you know, Pabst is $2, crafts are $4 and wine is an improbably cheap $4. Combine any of those with 6 wings for 6 bucks and you're probably ready for the Timbers game to start in the side room. But my favorite item on the menu is a rotation of house pickles for $3. Because pickles. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.

Best deal: $5 nachos and a $4 low-rent Manhattan (think of it as Queens).

Branch

2926 NE Alberta St., 503-206-6266, branchportland.com. 5-6 pm daily.

[CHEAP-WHISKEY MIRROR WORLD] Tiny Branch is often forgotten, a whiskey hidey-hole for the upper-incomed on Alberta, with 3-ounce scotch and bourbon taster flights cresting $25, and rotating food that might include a bechamel mac and cheese for the somewhat audacious price of $16, or duckfat-drenched fries served for $7. But come at happy hour, and suddenly all your economic sins are forgiven: Welcome to the land of $7 Old Fashioneds and $7 Manhattans. What a difference an hour makes. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.

Best deal: Watching anyone make a correct Old Fashioned for $7 is a pleasure.

Burnside Brewing

701 E Burnside St., 503-946-8151, burnsidebrewco.com. 3-5 pm food specials, 3-6 pm "fermentation hour" beer specials daily.

[PORK-RIND NACHO] Between its extensive, off-the-wall lineup of galangal or pumpkin seasonals and antlered, outdoorsy decor guaranteed to appease the expectations of tourists visiting a Real Portland Brewpub™, Burnside has maintained its status as a must-visit for nearly six years. But it's also one of very few breweries in the city to maintain a truly legit happy hour: a mere $5 for nachos made of pork cracklins (!), and $7 for a burger that usually clocks in at a hefty $12, plus a buck off pints. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.

Best deal: Stop in on Wednesdays and Imperial 20-ounce pints are $3.75 —plus those $5 cracklin' nachos. It's so wrong it's right.

Church

2600 NE Sandy Blvd., 503-206-8962, churchbarpdx.com. 4-7 pm daily.

[PRAY FOR PUNCH] Church is a cool indie bar with an ironic name and theme that has live rock music on Monday nights and DJs who occasionally put on a Shins track. It just installed a pleasant patio out back, and on the weekend it's a dance club.

But at happy hour, it's there for your cheap food needs: There's a $6 house punch, a tequila shot with a Sangrita back is $5 alongside a few $7 cocktails, and most importantly that half-pound burger now costs $8—or there are hush puppies for a fiver. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.

Best deal: $5 tequila shot and Sangrita or a $4 well, $8 half-pound burger.

Club 21

2035 NE Glisan St., 503-235-5690. 3-7 pm Monday-Friday.

[BURGER CHURCH] Little Sandy Boulevard ski-lodge-for-witches Club 21 has probably 15 beer signs inside as old as your mother. It was once a Ukrainian church. It was Jake's Crawfish. It was a bar called Shadows owned by the guy from Nick's Coney. Lately, the cheap drinks and build-your-own burgers have made it a daytime office for comic artists and drummers alike. At happy hour, you start with a $6 burger and then you stack it any which way you like. Spice it with sea salt and peppercorn or 12-spice barbecue, put it on a bun or toast or whole wheat, and add free veggies from standard (lettuce, onion, tomato) to wildstyle (pickled habanero). Fancy shit like cheese (whether cheddar or smoked gouda), bacon or sautéed mushrooms costs a buck extra. But wells are $3, so if you're feeling fancy, you can make that money back in cheap booze. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.

Best deal: The standard burger basket with fries is $7.

Firehouse

711 NE Dekum St., 954-1702, firehousepdx.com. 5-6 pm daily.

[PIZZA AND BEER] Once a place where overpaid government employees—excuse me, heroes—sat around playing cards and waiting for something to burst into flames, Firehouse is now where Portlanders on dates wait for the flames of a wood-fired oven to delicately char the edges of some of the city's best under-the-radar pizza. Wait early, and it's much cheaper. The first hour Firehouse is open, from 5 to 6, a splendidly charred pizza margherita is $6, which pairs quite nicely with a $3.50 Heater Allen Pilsner, a $6 house wine or a rotating $6 cocktail. Want sopressata on top of that pizza? Well, it's $11. Turns out the place can't discount the meat quite as much as the bread. Get a $3.50 side salad instead—fried cauliflower or salsa verde beets will do. MATTHEW SINGER.

Best deal: $6 margherita pizza, $3.50 Pilsner.

The Fixin' To

8218 N Lombard St., 503-477-4995, thefixinto.com. 2-6 pm Monday-Friday.

[DEEP SOUTH AND LOWDOWN] The Fixin' To is everyone's dream of a Southern dive bar on its best day. The clientele is lively and artfully disheveled, but not actively racist or mean. The one restroom is covered in scurrilous graffiti, but with no urine pooling in the corners. And instead of a wall of video poker, there's a gigantic Nintendo Game Boy that breaks the hearts of all comers with its intermittent functionality. At night, there's music, and during the afternoon it's cheap as hell—$1 Old German and $3 crafts and wells, which is to say that before 6 pm this is one of the cheapest bars in town, period. ADRIENNE SO.

Best deal: The Down and Out—Hamm's and a shot of Old Crow—is $4. A large Rotel and chips, like a nacho you dip yourself, is $5.

Florida Room

435 N Killingsworth St., 503-287-5658. 3-7 pm daily.

[BLOODY ON THE PATIO] Every neighborhood has something like the Florida Room—the kind of place that makes bad decisions feel inevitable. What began as a $3 happy-hour corn dog and some fart-themed tattoos—or a $4 pair of beef sliders just as dirty as both together—may end in a long night of dollar Olympias, which is not a happy-hour deal at all. It's just what they cost.

Best deal: All is cheap, and at happy hour it's 50 cents cheaper. Plus, you know, $3 corn dogs and fries.

Hale Pele

2733 NE Broadway, 503-662-8454, halepele.com. 4-6 pm daily.

[TIKI, NOT TACKY] Hale Pele is everything you could ever possibly want from a high-end tiki bar—from a delightfully kitschy interior (pufferfish lanterns and periodic thunderstorms) to a remarkably broad assortment of things being set on fire. But where Hale Pele really sets a high bar (or low limbo stick?) is in the quality of its cocktails. But, of course, you pay mixologist prices: $12 to $15. Well, welcome to the only thing geeks love more than tiki—a cheap-as-all-holy-hell happy hour with $5 pork sandwiches and cubanos, a $4 "weebimbap" Korean beef and rice bowl, and an array of $6 tiki-style improvisations like the neon blue curaçao, or more refined takes like a frothy pink vodka gimlet made with demerara syrup and an orgeat-falernum number made with gin and passionfruit called the Saturn.

Best deal: $4 weebimbab, $6 Saturn cocktail.

Interurban

4057 N Mississippi Ave., 503-284-6669, interurbanpdx.com. 3-6 pm Monday-Friday, 10 pm-close Sunday.

[ROYALE WITH LIQUOR] Interurban understands that a great bartender is more than an automated alcohol measurement system—but one who can settle debates about liquor while also making a Sazerac with admirable restraint. Food here has gone upscale of late, though there are still $7 hot wings at happy hour. But when in Rome, get the $9 pâté plate instead, and pair it with a $4 imperial pint of craft beer, a $5 wine, or—good goddamn, is that a $5 kir royale? A $5 "punch" made almost entirely of brandy, bourbon and rum? A $5 "sangria" that's mostly wine, chinato and vermouth? Liquor's quicker, America.

Best deal: Select $4 imperial pints, $5 wines and $5 cocktails. Cheap snacks. Discounted barrel-strength whiskey.

Killer Burger

4644 NE Sandy Blvd., 971-544-7521; 8728 SE 17th Ave., 841-5906; 510 SW 3rd Ave., 946-8946; killerburger.biz. 2-5 pm Monday-Friday.

[GRILLIN' WITH BACON] Even with its mandatory bacon policy, Killer Burger reins it in to create tight, interesting burgers that are disposed toward smoky and spicy flavors. And during "crazy hour," which lasts three hours, KB develops a form of dyslexia in which its classic $9.65 BLT-style burger and signature peanut butter, pickle and bacon burger become instead $6.95 burgers, everywhere Killer Burgers are sold. Combine that with $3.50 beers, and you have one of the best burger deals in Portland.

Best deal: There is only one deal, and it is great.

Lincoln

3808 N Williams Ave., 503-288-6200, lincolnpdx.com. 5:30-7 pm Tuesday-Friday.

[USE THE NOODLES] The impossibly crisp-on-the-outside and tender, sweet-on-the-inside cornmeal onion rings with pimento aioli ($6) are alone worth a trip to Lincoln. The fact that you can nab them off the happy-hour menu, alongside other staples from the regular menu like the creamy baked eggs ($6) or the handmade lumache pasta with whipped asparagus butter ($12), is a tasty opportunity not to be passed on. Tack on a $4 draft beer or $6 "bartender's choice" cocktail and you're made. PENELOPE BASS.

Best deal: The most expensive happy-hour item is also the best bargain: the $12 lumache, otherwise a $20 dish. At Lincoln, get the damn pasta.

Maui's

3508 N Williams Ave., 503-282-1611. 4-7 pm daily.

[PRE-POSTGENTRIFICATION PRICING] In April, the Maui's patio burned down. But luckily for Portland sports fans, it wasn't out of commission for long. In the space of two weeks, the staff made a heroic effort and cleaned the place up and rebuilt the patio and now the cheapest bar south of St. Johns is back to servicing patio smokers with $1.25 happy-hour Pabst, $2.50 well drinks and $3 craft beers. It is a funny world in which the city's most notorious gentrified street has this one little outpost of cheapness left over for the first-wave bohemian gentrifiers now getting pushed out by the real deal.

Best deal: The $2.50 wells are, uh, worth it.

Moloko

3967 N Mississippi Ave., 503-288-6272, molokopdx.com. 4-7 pm daily.

[FRESH-SQUEEZED] Amid Portland's—especially North Portland's—unending sea of irony, thrift-store tchotchkes and tallboys, it's almost refreshing to see something modern: swoopy cutaway-back chairs, a white bar, no signage. Creepy Clockwork Orange overtones aside, Moloko's most striking feature is the presence of five large, spotlessly maintained saltwater fish tanks that cast a purplish glow over shelves of hand-labeled infusions and tinctures. Its other most distinguishing feature? A windless enclosed rear patio where you can drink cocktails with fresh-squeezed juice for $4.50 at happy hour, alongside your buddy and his $1.50 Rainier and your other buddy with a $3.50 gin and tonic.

Best deal: $1.50 Rainier pint, $5 tuna melt or salami sandwich.

NEPO 42

5403 NE 42nd Ave., 503-288-8080, nepo42.com. 3-6 pm daily.

[COMFORT 'HOOD] For years, the signboard hovering atop NEPO 42's sprawling front patio has quoted Oscar Wilde's old adage "Work Is the Curse of the Drinking Class," and its clientele does tend to keep office hours. Around 5, a steady stream of aspirational-normcore regulars begins filling the well-lit, dark-wood pub nouveau interiors to drink select $4 pints from among 20 craft taps or gobble zippy, hearty wings ($5, two for a buck during Blazers games last season). Meanwhile, curious patrons less eager to brave bustling, eerily family-friendly crowds could arrive one hour earlier to find a blissfully vacant bar in which to throw back a stiff whiskey and ginger ($4), nurse a supple Champagne cocktail ($5), or tuck into rather more indulgent fare. Though NEPO recently shelved its battered bacon appetizer, cholesterol-loading patrons need only seek out the masterful fried chicken—golden-brown chunks of crisped succulence either layered atop a waffle ($7) or hidden within the bacon-, spinach- and pepper-laden mac and cheese ($9). JAY HORTON.

Best deal: The $6 Evinrude Special (Evan Williams Green Label and Old German tallboy), plus the $6 OG Dog (a ginormous frankfurter wrapped in a sturdy potato bun and slathered with jalapeño relish, homemade sauerkraut, and a house mustard itself steamed with Old German). Area dives may offer their own variations for one-third the price, but Wilde had another quip about cynics who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Pix Pâtisserie

2225 E Burnside St., 971-271-7166, pixpatisserie.com. 4-6 pm Monday-Friday, 2-4 pm Saturday-Sunday,, midnight-close nightly.

[FREENESS IS SWEET] Pix does everything its own peculiar way—so why should happy hour be different? This dim, red-walled haunt for sherry and Champagne and exotic macarons doesn't offer food discounts, exactly. It just flat out gives away food. As in many bars in Spain, each drink at Pix after midnight or during its first two hours each day will net you a little tapa treat: a bacon-wrapped date, say or a quail egg equally pork-wrapped. Maybe it's an anchovy-stuffed Gilda pepper, who knows? All will go just fine with sangria-like tinto wine, or Baque txakoli—both just $4 at happy hour. And if you go nuts and splurge for a bottle after midnight? That's 10 percent off. But maybe reserve that for Thursday, when happy hour lasts forever.

Best deal: A $4 glass of Txakoli with a free montadito on the side.

Sayler's

10519 SE Stark St., 503-252-4171, saylers.com. 3-6 pm weekdays, 9 pm-close nightly.

[LOW STEAKS] Sayler's Old Country Kitchen steak house is a sprawling East Portland meat hotel with loyal customers who go back longer than many of our readers have been alive. It advertises the best happy hour on the eastside—and it's hard to argue when seemingly everything in the world costs less than $5 before 6 pm and after 9 —whether $3 wells and drafts, $2.95 onion rings or $4.95 peppersteak bites or chicken strips, with crazy old-time novelties like a $2.95 relish plate that turns out to be a crudité party tray of carrot, celery, baby corn, pickle and olive—complete with ranch. It's cheaper than you'd get it at a grocery store. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.

Best deal: If you want to go really cheap, get the 72-ounce steak and eat the whole thing in an hour to get it for free. I did, anyway.

Related: One Man's Quest to Chomp Through 39 Pounds' Worth of Portland Food Challenges

Spare Room

830 NE 42nd Ave., 503-287-5800, spareroomrestaurantandlounge.com. 3-6 pm daily.

[MOM'S MEATLOAF] A sprawling dive that serves as Cully's unofficial community center, this former bowling alley hosts a range of entertainment, from string-band square dances to Kill Rock Stars showcases to bingo nights for the senior set to the funk stylings of Cool Breeze or Prince tribute band Erotic City. A bar for all time and seasons, it weathers afternoons particularly well, when well drinks and Budweiser both drop to $2.25 and Pabst sinks to a low, low $1.25. But then, this is also a bar where $3 Beam and Cokes happen all day every day, $5 nets you pancakes and bacon in the morning before 11 am. That same $5 will get you a burger and fries at lunch, a spaghetti dinner on Monday or a meatloaf dinner on Tuesday. JAY HORTON.

Best deal: Come on Tuesday at 5 pm, and get meatloaf and a PBR for $6.25 total.

The Standard

14 NE 22nd Ave., 503-233-4181. 3-6 pm daily.

[GOLD-STANDARD DEALS] The Standard is still the sort of place where bartenders write their favorite regulars a personal tab, and then maybe shoot them a little shit when they finally pay it off. The changing taps of craft beer are $3.50 at happy hour and carefully chosen—Firestone Walker Oaktoberfest on the rotator, Pfriem Pilsner on the permataps—whiskey comes with a back and it's understood, there's hot cider in winter and slushies in summer, and everyone becomes a regular sooner or later, even the little shits who roll in for dollar Hamm's night or dollar Hamm's happy hour, or all-day, everyday dollar cans of beer. And regulars are always missed when they go. It's the best little bar in Portland, and I won't hear otherwise.

Best deal: $3 craft pints are offered all day every Sunday.

Swift Lounge

1932 NE Broadway, 503-288-3333, swiftloungepdx.com. 4-8 pm Monday-Saturday, 4 pm-2 am Sunday.

[MASONIC BAR] Calling Swift Lounge the coolest hangout on Broadway is like proclaiming Stanford's the finest dining in all of Lloyd Center, but the place really is a quintessential den of Portlandia-style hipsterism. Drinks are served in Mason jars, the bacon is cured in-house, and the DJs spin '90s hip-hop. Good luck snaring an open table on Saturday night. Once the crowds for the Hungover Brunch clear out, though, Sunday afternoons are typically chill enough to grab a seat on the sidewalk by the time the "Jolly Hour" kicks in, with a slate of satisfying $5 sliders, pint glasses of sangria for $3 and plates of honey-dipped crispy chicken for $4. Pay in cash and get change for the NBA Jam machine by the restroom. MATTHEW SINGER.

Best deal: The Old Couple, a tallboy of Old German with a shot of Old Crow for $4.

The Tannery

5425 E Burnside St, 503-236-3610, tannerybarpdx.com. 4-6 pm and 10 pm-close daily.

[MOUNT RAINIER] A tricked-out mountain cabin filled with bourgeois mixology and meaty comforts at the edge of Tabor, the Tannery also doubles as the 'hood's best neighborhood bar. And being neighborly, as a bar, often means being cheap enough to pop into on the daily. And so happy hour involves $1 Rainier bottles and Tecate cans, plus wine for $5—a solid date for the erstwhile Mikes and Mollys of the world, when matched up with three-deep sliders at $4 apiece. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.

Best deal: A buck for Rainier keeps Jack from becoming a dull boy.

Tapalaya

28 NE 28th Ave., 503-232-6652, tapalaya.com. 4-6 pm daily.

[WING THING] Tapalaya is a not a Cajun restaurant per se—it's a New Orleans restaurant, and here that means a hefty dose of Vietnamese from its second-generation Vietnamese Big Easy chef, Anh Lu. Which is a roundabout way of saying get the $6 fish sauce wings at happy hour, because they're great: spicy, crispy, sweet and large. They pair just fine with a $3 martini or a $5 gris-gris margarita, which—as it turns out—is a fine idea. Other Vietnamese-inflected dishes include a decent-enough $5 lemongrass steak skewer and the best $5 banh mi within a square mile of the restaurant. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.

Best deal: $6 wings, $3 martinis.

Wooden Chicken Pub

12500 NE Sandy Blvd., 503-253-8893, woodenchickenpub.com. 4:30-6:30 pm daily.

['MERICA] It is possible that massive Parkrose party bar the Wooden Chicken has the cheapest Bud in town to go with its collection of Bud and Bud Lite tap handles—each brought in by customers from God knows where. But however that came about, pints of Bud at happy hour go for $2—Pabst prices—and pitchers are a cool $7.50. That's all the better to wash down a series of $3 food specials that seem impossible, from 10-piece fried mac and cheese to four wings to a duplex of cheeseburgers or pulled pork sliders. If it's Monday, it gets even harder to fathom: $3 for spaghetti with Italian sausage. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.

Best deal: $3 wings, $7.50 pitcher of America beer, previously known as Budweiser. God bless America.

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

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Top 5 Happy Hour Burgers Under $5

Strip Club Happy Hours

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

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