Phoenix, AZ 85018
602-852-3939
www.postinowinecafe.com
twitter.com/PostinoWineCafe
Parking: It's not LA - there's free-parking everywhere!!
(Look ma, free parking!)
Daily, 11 am - 5 pm, $5 select glasses of wine (and what a selection?!), $5 beer pitchers (not like huge beer pitchers :)
It’s always fun trying out a happy hour in a new city – we know that happy hour is happy hour anywhere, from New Zealand to Memphis. So, when I set out for Phoenix (in spite of the boycott (lo siento!)) to spend some quality time with family, my one goal for the low-key weekend was to hit up a local happy hour.
And finding the spot is half the fun. My beer maestro brother swears by Zipps, where he likely spent over half his birthright (J/Kzzz, we don’t have birthrights) during his several years in Scottsdale, but it was too far from my great-tia’s house in Phoenix. My uncle had heard good things about Postino’s closer to her and Yelp confirmed it was a solid happy hour bet – coming up 2nd in the search queue.
So great-aunt & grandmother in tow, I headed for Postino (quaintly named as the location formerly housed a post office!) for their Sunday afternoon reggae and white sangria. I first noted the full parking lot, which I came to find out later – has discouraged some other relatives from visiting Postino. But for an LA-kid, the fact that free nearby lots and street parking was available – well, ain’t that a novel concept?
My second note was that we did have to add our names to a waiting list; happy hour is not at the bar, per se, it’s to be ordered from your seats. So we bopped around the adjacent La Grande Orange shop to bide our time – it also seemed like a good time with good food (albeit loud & busy). Thankfully, our wait was short and we were sat outside, which was fine in the 95 degree temperature – almost everywhere seems to have nice shading and misters.
Now, going to happy hour with new peeps is always a trip – seeing how they rate a restaurant. For example (and note #3), my grandmother liked the heaviness of their silverware, but wasn’t impressed by the wiping of the tables and chairs with the same rag. Both review points rarely cross my mind, so it was good to hear her thoughts.
My gang of three forwent the $5 wine and beer deals and instead opted for the Sunday special - $5 white wine sangria. I quite enjoyed mine, but my HH partners thought it a bit sour and added splenda. There are no food deals on the happy hour menu, but the prices are not too wallet-depleting. I got the ½ Italian Market Salad (greens tossed with roasted beets, goat cheese, bacon (no bacon for me!) and walnuts topped with crisped root vegetables in herb vinaigrette) and ½ vegetarian sandwich (grilled Asparagus, roasted artichokes, red onion, vine ripe tomatoes, goat cheese, and house-made pesto) for $9.50 and a cup of the Brocolli-cheddar soup for $2.50. I didn’t leave any room for the bruschetta, but it sounded great – you pick four options of toppings (including brie & apples with fig spread; smoked salmon or salami with pesto; white bean with chopped tomato; ricotta with dates & pistachios, and more) for $12.75.
The crowd was pretty homogenous – youngish professionals on family time listening to the one-man reggae band. I think it’d be a great spot to catch up with a girlfriend over the weekend. And I’d love to see what kind of crowd the early evening/evening brings. To me, it seems weeknights would be optimal for a date night.
I also wonder about the 11-5 happy hour, which is great for the weekend, but I wonder who can partake on weekdays. Any Phoenicians out there have thoughts on the typical Phoenix workday/primo happy hour timing?
--JB
Rating: 3.5 Martinis
This has nothing to do with the review, but my dog-cousin is the cutest, littlest thing I ever did see (and she lives in Phoenix :).
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