The Best Happy Hour Meals In Seattle

While top Seattle hotels remain pricey, you can get a sublime meal and drinks in this town for surprisingly little.

TRAVEL ADVISORY | Wanting to get out of town two weeks ago, we headed for Seattle. High-style hotels are pricey in this city, but we snagged a lovely room at Seattle’s Pan Pacific for $185 per night (parking was $20 extra), at least $70 less than every other top-name hotel we checked with. Plus we saved a bundle on dinner.

The Pan Pacific is located in trendy South Lake Union, a mere five-minute walk into the heart of downtown where, after a day of exploring and shopping, local friends introduced us to another great Seattle money saver: happy hour meals.

If you’re willing to eat on the early side (anywhere from 3 to 6:30 p.m.) or after 10 p.m., you’ll find plenty of restaurants ready to ply you with discounted food and drink. Practically every restaurant in Seattle has a happy hour, according to our friends, who took us to Barolo Ristorante (pictured above), a personal favourite that features northern Italian cuisine so we could see how they sup several nights a week. “Some happy hours [restaurants] are known for the drinks. Ours is known for food,” our server told us, before handing us bar menus where every dish listed was half price, and the most expensive item was an antipasti plate for $7.

“Here, take this,” our friends said, pressing a copy of Seattle magazine into my hands as we were about to head home to Vancouver. “Your website readers may find the information useful.” The April 2012 issue they gave me contains mouth-watering reviews of 17 of the best restaurant happy hours in the city (these include Cuoco, pictured above), places with “half-price wine lists, cheap cocktails and sublime dishes we’d happily pay twice as much to eat,” according to the authors. (CLICK HERE for an online version of the story.)

I don’t know about you visiting this city, dear readers, but the Seattle piece is the kind of story that makes me want to go back. —Ruth Rainey

In Seattle, contact the Pan Pacific Hotel at 206-264-8111, visit panpacific.com; contact Barolo Ristorante at 206-770-9000, visit baroloseattle.com; contact Cuoco at 206-971-0710, visit cuoco-seattle.com.

Photos: Seattle’s new Great Wheel via Seattle PI; courtesy, Barolo on Facebook; Cuoco via Seattle magazine