Cocktails & Eats

Where to drink right now: 10 hot, happy hour deals

Del Frisco's Pomegranate Martini
Welcome to happy hour at Saint Genevieve!
Photo by William Vo
Mini tostadas with snapper ceviche at Mockingbird Bistro
Photo by Paula Murphy

It’s another sweltering August in Houston. Keep cool with 10 more thirst quenching happy hour specials at hot spots around town. These deals are not only good for wetting your whistle, they're also stomach pleasing and dollar saving.

Blu Restaurant & Lounge

The suburbs need drink deals too. Happy hour at Sugar Land's Blu Restaurant & Lounge runs from 4 to 7 p.m. daily and features dishes from the regular menu for only $4. Choices include the sweet potato samosas, edamame dumplings and tequila ceviche.

Whether it's inside at the swanky bar and lounge or outside on the restaurant's 1,400-square-foot patio, for $5 you can enjoy specials on hand-crafted cocktails like the Blinker made with rye whiskey, grapefruit and raspberry and the 9INE TO 5IVER — a mix of red and white wine, brandy, citrus and peach bitters.

Also available: $2 domestic drafts, $3 imports, $4 craft beers, and wines by the glass for $5.

Houston Texans Grille

Catch the big game — any big game — on more than 65 high-definition TVs while you enjoy food and drink specials at the Houston Texans Grille in CityCentre. There’s a regular happy hour, Mondays through Fridays from 4 to 7 p.m., and a reverse happy hour, Sundays through Thursdays from 10 p.m. until close.

You won’t leave hungry with chicken lime quesadillas, nachos and mini-burgers as options on the two-for-one appetizer menu.

Red and white house wines, a 20-ounce beer of the month and well liquors are yours for $4 and under. Select liquors are only a dollar more and the bar is stocked with just about all Three Olives’ flavors.

Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steak House

The opening of Del Frisco’s sister restaurant, Del Frisco’s Grille, isn’t the only exciting news — so are the bar menu prices available every day from open to close at this Galleria steakhouse. Along with more than a few great dishes to sample — sesame crusted tuna, seared filet tips and smoked salmon rillettes to name a few — Del Frisco’s menu also offers a variety of cocktails, from a pomegranate martini to the classic Old Fashioned.

MKT BAR at Phoenicia Specialty Foods

MKT BAR downtown runs a happy hour deal Mondays through Fridays from 4 to 7 p.m. A $6 bites menu is comprised of several dips (herb hummus and pomegranate yogurt dip for example) with baked pita chips, homemade plantain chips with mango salsa and chimichurri sauce and za'atar dusted, hand-cut fries.

Wines by the glass go for $5, draft beer is $4 and bottled beer is $3. Get crazy all day long on Wine Wednesdays. Snack and sip for cheap from open until close with half price bottles of select wine paired with an $8 charcuterie and cheese plate.

Mockingbird Bistro

The 5-5-5 happy hour at Mockingbird Bistro is available weekdays from 4 to 7 p.m. Five bucks will get you select eats, wines by the glass, classic cocktails and two-for-one local brews. Try the lobster risotto lollipops with sweet corn infusion and mini snapper ceviche tostadas.

Add to your dining pleasure with a Lynchburg Lemonade, Greyhound or Cuba Libra.

Bistro Bar at Bistro Alex

From the beverages to the cuisine, Bistro Bar at Hotel Sorella offers a half price discount on all bar menu items weekdays from 3 to 8 p.m. The prices may be small, but the portions are anything but tiny. For $7 or less you can choose from items like the Bistro Burger, pulled pork BBQ burger and chicken tenders (all with fries), and an assortment of flatbreads.

Discounted beverages include beer, wine, well drinks and specialty cocktails such as the Mandarin Cosmo, Pimm’s Cup and French Italian Martini made with Grey Goose Orange, Tuaca and lemon juice.

Note: Take advantage of the complimentary valet with any food or drink purchase.

Jasper’s

From 3 to 7 pm every day, libations and edibles at Jasper’s in The Woodlands are a mere $5 across the board. Noteworthy nosh includes buffalo chicken pizza, crab cake sliders, Angus beef sliders, and Teriyaki chicken lettuce wraps. The drink menu offers the likes of select wines by the glass, an apple or raspberry martini and an Orange Dream Cocktail made with tangerine vodka, orange juice, triple sec, and whipped cream.

Saint Genevieve

Saint Genevieve at West Ave has a 6-7-8 menu Tuesdays through Fridays from 4 to 8 p.m. At the $6 level, order the Blistered Shishito Peppers or Herb Gnocchi Tots. Spicy Spanish meatballs and reuben empanadas are on the $7 menu and for $8, you can order the margherita flatbread.

Treviso prosecco and Tito’s Vodka are $7 each and an $8 menu include Alias Cabernet by the glass and the Mellow Time Cocktail, a combination of Jameson Irish Whiskey, lemon juice, honey, bitters and applewood smoked salt.

J. Black’s

From 4 to 7 p.m. daily and all night Sundays, starters at J. Black’s on Washington Avenue are half off. Options include grilled cheese with tomato basil dipping sauce, calamari and pigs in a blanket. Save on drinking, too, with $2 off all drinks and 25-percent off bottles of wine.

Tuesday is “Pints and Pizza” night — $3 select craft pints and half-priced artisan pizzas.

BRIO Tuscan Grille

The Tuscan Tasters bar menu at Brio Tuscan Grille lets you get dishes such as spicy shrimp and eggplant, beef carpaccio, the BRIO Burger and several flatbreads and bruschettas for $3.95 each. This deal is available in the bar Mondays through Fridays from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m., with a reverse happy hour from 9 p.m. until close.

From 4 p.m. until close, also Mondays through Fridays, reap the benefits of $5 low-priced drink specials on housemade sangrias, mojitos, martinis and wine. Another perk: A dozen-plus martini flavors for $5 each on Martini Wednesdays. With one location in CityCentre, keep your eyes peeled for another location opening mid-August in River Oaks.

Have a favorite happy hour deal? Let us know!

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a martini experience

Posh Houston seafood spot stirs up 2 over-the-top $100 caviar martinis

Courtesy of Truluck's

Diners have the choice of either a gin or vodka martini.

A Houston seafood restaurant has added some extra luxury to its martini offerings. Truluck's Ocean's Finest Seafood & Crab, the Galleria-area restaurant known for its steak and crustaceans, recently added two different $100 martinis to its menu, as well as a significantly less expensive way to zhuzh up its cocktails with caviar-stuffed olives.

Dave Mattern, Truluck’s partner and beverage director, tells CultureMap that he wanted to build an experience around the trend of martinis garnished with caviar-stuffed olives that he’d seen on social media. He began tinkering with two cocktails, a vodka martini made with Belvedere 10 and a gin martini made with Nolet’s Reserve, which retails for around $700 a bottle.

“When someone orders a martini, we hand-stuff four olives with caviar, and then we put them in a cute, little porcelain bathtub. Then we wheel the cart to the table and stir a vodka martini. We have a bottle of Belvedere 10 that lights up. It makes for a really nice experience,” Mattern says.

Similarly, the gin martini is presented with blackberry, a lemon twist, and other garnishes that highlight the different botanicals used in distilling the spirit.

Truluck's martinis Each martini is served with four caviar-stuffed olives.Courtesy of Truluck's

Truluck’s goes all out for its hand-stuffed caviar olives, too. The restaurant uses extra-large Spanish olives that, in Mattern’s words, “soak up a lot of caviar.” So much that Truluck’s uses a full ounce of caviar for every six olives.

“You get a burst of caviar when you bite into the olive,” he says.

Each of the $100 martinis comes with four caviar-stuffed olives. Diners can add an olive or two at an à la carte price of $10 for one olive. “It’s almost a little appetizer when you think about it,” Mattern says about the four olives that come with each martini.

Currently, the offering is only available at Truluck’s location on Westheimer. Since Mattern is the company’s beverage director, he’s hearing from colleagues at other locations who want to add it to their menus.

“I’m trying to figure out how to take it to every location so we do it right and use the freshest of caviar,” he says. “When you waste caviar, an angel cries in heaven. We have to make sure we’re using it all.”

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