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23Hoyt
529 NW 23rd Ave., 503-445-7400, 23hoyt.com. 4-6:30 pm daily, 9-11 pm Friday-Saturday.
[CHEAP DATE] Longtime restaurateur Bruce Carey's Northwest Hoyt Street staple has seen many iterations over its 10 years of existence, but the current one—indoor trees, potted succulents, the words "gastropub" and "tavern" recently affixed to menus and signage—seems to have struck a chord with the influx of transplants and millennials looking for the Portland they saw on TV. They're here fashionably ignoring each other while Instagramming one of the markedly average $6–to-$8 happy-hour cocktails (the "dealer's choice" is a safe bet). Nab a seat at the circus and order the popular $3 charcuterie plate, which, when paired with four deviled eggs topped with bacon crumbles and a dusting of Parmesan ($2), actually makes an excellent light supper for under five bucks. KAT MERCK.
Best deal: The $3 "daily charcuterie" presents a generous pile of meat alongside a full complement of sliced baguette, pickled vegetables and mustard.
Bartini
2108 NW Glisan St., 503-224-7919, bartinipdx.com. 3:30-6:30 pm, 10 pm-close daily; all day Monday.
[CHEESE PLZ] There are a few places you'll go that will cause certain people to call you "basic." Buffalo Wild Wings, all of Southwest Portland—and Bartini. It's like Portland's own little Sex and the City bus tour shrunk down into a tiny room bordering a fondue restaurant. But with shiny black walls, giant paintings of goldfish in martini glasses, princessy glass chandeliers, a dozen-page book of 100-plus drinks, and an '80s Jazzercise-esque logo, what's not to love? It'll take a while to eat your way through the 30-item food menu (each with its own happy-hour price), so here's a tip: The Gorgonzola-brie fondue is the best, and it's easily shareable. Skip the $6 cheeseburger, but definitely get the $3 mashed potatoes in a martini glass, served with a wedge of brie. Drinks are half-price during happy hour, which is most of the hours Bartini is open. Expect sweetness and possibly a flower or sprig of mint; but at $4 apiece, these drinks seem to say what your best friend would. Treat yourself, girl—you deserve it! SOPHIA JUNE.
Best deal: $4 cocktails. If you're not into sweet, go for the lemon-basil. The $8 fondue pot comes with a plate of sourdough bread cubes.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Punch Bowl Social
340 SW Morrison St., 503-334-0360, punchbowlsocial.com. 3-6 pm, 10 pm-close daily.
[CANADIAN COWBOY BOOTS] Home to seemingly every company holiday party in town, Punch Bowl Social is a shopping-mall smashup of bowling and shuffleboard and cocktails and karaoke and pingpong and video games and…a surprisingly serious devotion to scratch-made Southern comfort fare, enough so that it just brought on Canadian celebrity chef Hugh Acheson as a business partner. And so Canadians and Midwesterners should take heart that Acheson shares the Canadian quality of being very particular about poutine. The mammoth plate is a traditional wealth of gravy and curd that will feed three drunks handily. But if we're dousing carbs in fat, I'd still go for the bacon pimiento with pullman toast, which is like the mall version of cocaine. Standard drink specials are unremarkable, but the goofy ones serve you well. Go for a $6 daiquiri or a big ol' glass of $7 punch. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.
Best deal: That $8 poutine costs the same as the junior burger—but it feeds more people.
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.
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.
Willamette Week