Top restaurants fight slowdown with revamped happy hour menus

Way back when, the phrase “happy hour” was guaranteed to get my attention. Two-for-one drinks! Snacks! Party! Countless unfortunate cocktails and lame chicken wings later, that phrase lost its power to draw me to a seat at the bar.

Or so I thought. Recently there’s been a happy-hour renaissance, with several leading restaurants nationwide serving a terrific array of discounted cocktails and small-and not so small-plates.

I discovered a good reason for this. Restaurant traffic has slowed at both sit-down and fast-food places, for a confluence reasons ranging from uncertainty over the upcoming presidential election to Brexit to Chipotle’s health-department issues. The ever-expanding range of delivery food services from such sources as Amazon and UberEats is added incentive not to leave home.

But most restaurateurs are in the business of seeing a glass half full and figuring out a hospitable, and profitable, way to fill it up. Restaurants have started serving breakfast (one bright spot in that sluggish dining-out study noted that breakfast sandwiches topped the growth foods list), and they’re staying open all day. And most appealing to me: They’re ramping up happy hour menus.

For various reasons that invariably come back to excessive drinking, happy hour is banned in eight states. Last year, Illinois eliminated that prohibition, with a catch: Places can offer happy hour menus for no more than 15 hours per week. Now one of the cities’ most popular spots, Dove’s Luncheonette, chef Paul Kahan’s platonic ideal of a Mex-American counter. Kahan is celebrating happy hour with Sip or Shoot shots of mescal or tequila for $5, plus there’s a $2 beer shorty.

At one of the country’s best new restaurants in San Francisco, a city recently called out for its relentlessly high-priced dining scene, uber-sustainable Perennial features 50 percent off the cocktail of the day. It also serves discounted draft beer and bar bites like pork popcorn and a corned beef hamburger.