After a tough day at work, I embraced the idea of going to happy hour to enjoy half price drinks and some fattening bar food.

We met up with our friend Susan who lives in SOMA and who is familiar with some the places in the city to have happy hour. We started out at Palomino near the Embarcadero which has Happy Hour 4-6pm. They have a very nice outdoor patio and with the beautiful weather on Friday, it was packed! There is a bartender outside selling limited drinks for $5 (like a cranberry mojito, wine, tequila shots, etc). Unfortunately, there were no tables freeing up outside. But to note, apparently you can make a reservation for happy hour if you have enough people, maybe 10 to 15 in the party.

We ended up finding a spot inside as one of Susan’s former co-workers was there at a table so we squeezed ourselves right in so that we could order food before 6pm. They have a selection of appetizers that are half off and pizzas are $5. There were additional drinks like draft beers and green apple drop which were $5 as well.

Please excuse my poor pictures from my camera phone, my hands were shaky (maybe because I was hungry….)

This is the calamari served with a marinara and (we think) a garlic aioli. The batter was nice and crisp and the aioli was spicy with raw garlic, yum!

A personal sized rotisserie chicken pizza. If you like really thin crust pizza then you’ll like this. I wasn’t too much of a fan because I like more toppings and less cheese but it’s not bad for $5.

Potatoes gorgonzola…. man, these were heavenly. They have a really good fryer in their kitchen because these were so crisp and stayed really crisp even after they cooled down. The gorgonzola went well with the fries although not spread very evenly so some fries had none and some fries had a ton plus after a while, the cheese solidified so it was hard to scoop up more onto the fries that had none.

After chowing down and enjoying a few drinks, we went to meet up with some other people at Chez Papa Resto in Mint Plaza. The happy hour there is until 7pm. We just went to meet them for drinks while they were having dinner, so had them order us a lychee martini ($6). Chez Papa also has a Bistrot on 18th Street which we’ve eaten at with our families for a birthday many years back although nothing sticks in my mind if it was really good but it wasn’t really bad. One of the reasons why I’m glad that I have a way to keep track of where we’ve eaten and if it is worth returning to.

Well, back to happy hour. Here is the lychee martini. A bit strange and Susan said it was different than the first time she’d had it, the first time it was clear and sweeter. Today’s lychee martini tasted like it had star anise in it, was very cloudy, and it didn’t really taste like a lychee drink except for the two lychees in the glass…

Happy hour is fun, a needed stress relief from a chaotic day.

Palomino
345 Spear Street

Chez Papa Resto
4 Mint Plaza