Scottsdale’s restaurants are priced for people on vacation, and the people who live here have a workaround: they eat at 4:30. Happy hour in this city isn’t a couple of dollars off a beer; it’s a parallel menu, served in the bar and on the patio, that lets you eat at the good places for what a chain would charge. Here’s how the window works and where we’d spend it.
How an Arizona happy hour works
The window is almost always weekday afternoons, typically three to six, sometimes later on a slow night, and it applies at the bar and on the patio rather than in the dining room. Arizona liquor rules allow discounted drinks but not free ones, and no bar can serve you more than a set pour at a time, which is why the deals are on price and food rather than volume. Reverse happy hours, late on weeknights, exist at a handful of spots and are the best-kept secret of the industry crowd. Menus change with the season; the ones below are the pattern, not the contract, and the day’s board wins.
Old Town: the best windows
Cien Agaves. Daily, and one of the most dependable in the district: house margaritas, discounted tacos and half-off appetizers, on a patio pointed at the Old Town foot traffic. The Mexican-food list has the dinner version.
Diego Pops. The pink taco shack runs a daily afternoon window with half-price appetizers, which means the Brussels sprout nachos and street corn queso for the price of a coffee. Best patio happy hour in Old Town.
Pinyon. The two-story Mediterranean room on the Civic Center Mall does a daily oyster hour and cheap house-made pita and hummus under the olive trees. It’s the elegant version of the window.
Roaring Fork. Bar-area happy hour daily with margaritas, wines by the glass and the famous big-ass burger at a lunch price. The wood-fire kitchen doesn’t do a lesser version of anything.
Citizen Public House. Bernie Kantak’s 5th Avenue gastropub runs a bar happy hour where the cocktails, which are the reason to go, drop into sensible territory. Order the chopped salad at any price.
Hula’s Modern Tiki. Tropical cocktails at a discount in a room whose glass walls roll up to the street. Tiki happy hour is a genre, and this is its Scottsdale home.
Zipps and Coach House are the regular’s happy hours: wings and pitchers at the sports grill, cheap drinks at the 1959 tavern that opens at six in the morning anyway.
The wine-cafe formula
Postino built the Valley’s most beloved happy-hour formula: cheap glasses and pitchers before five, the bruschetta board, and the weeknight bottle-and-bruschetta deal that packs the patio after eight. It’s the one visitors don’t know and locals plan weeks around.
Sorso at Scottsdale Quarter hands you a card and a wall of self-serve wine dispensers, and the afternoon window discounts the pour. The wine-tasting-room guide covers the rest of the bottle-first rooms.
Steakhouse lounges
The steakhouses are where happy hour saves the most money. The bar menus at Dominick’s, Bourbon & Bones, Mastro’s City Hall and Eddie V’s run sliders, oysters, discounted martinis and small-plate versions of the dining-room dishes at a fraction of the full ticket, in rooms with live piano or jazz. Sit at the bar, eat the bar menu, and you’ve had the steakhouse experience without the steakhouse bill. The Salt Cellar, three flights underground, does the same for seafood.
The neighborhood versions
Outside Old Town the window is where the neighborhoods eat. The Vig in McCormick Ranch has a lawn-games backyard and a happy hour built for it. Grassroots is the McCormick Ranch tavern with a chef’s touch and a bourbon list to match. Brat Haus discounts its 28 craft taps under the trees. Salt & Lime on Shea and Sol at the Quarter run margarita windows for the after-work crowd. The Living Room at Market Street is DC Ranch’s wraparound patio with a self-serve wine wall.
The rules
- Bar and patio only. If the host seats you in the dining room, you’re paying dinner prices. Say “happy hour” at the door.
- Weekdays. Weekend happy hours are rare here, and the ones that exist are shorter.
- Sit down before the bell. Most rooms honor the order, not the clock; anything ordered before six is at the happy-hour price. Arriving at 5:50 and ordering for the table is a legitimate strategy.
- Tip on the full price. The bartenders are doing the same work.
- Summer is the season. From June through September the windows lengthen, the patios mist, and a few places run all-afternoon deals to fill the room. The budget guide builds the whole day around it.
- Reverse happy hour. Ask. A few kitchens run a late window on weeknights, and it’s the best cheap dinner in the city if you can eat at 9:30.
The one-night plan
Oysters at Pinyon at four, the walk down the Civic Center to Diego Pops for nachos at five, and a martini at the Mastro’s bar at 5:50, just under the wire. Three of the best rooms in Old Town, one bill you’ll be pleased with. That’s how the people who live here do it.