Southern Recipes also is home of the $5 martini and, incidentally, the secret to happiness: happy hour from 4 to 7 p.m. every day. Cheap martinis, cheap beer, and $3 house wines? That’s all my friends and I needed to hear.
Once inside, I bellied up to the bar and ordered a dirty martini, extra olives. The server asked, “Do you want salt with that?”
“Uh, martini, not margarita, thanks. Extra cold. Extra olives.”
She looked embarrassed. I cussed my choice of seat — we had chosen one of the plentiful tables in the restaurant and not in the bar because my company was more in the mood to eat, not drink. A shame, because in addition to facing potential chaos when ordering, I would be missing whatever was on the big-screen TV in the bar.
I girded myself for my unsalted margarita with extra olives. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised when the server brought out a perfectly hazy, icy ‘tini replete with two skewers of olives. The briny drink tasted like the ocean, the sure sign of a faultless extra-dirty.
Thus fortified, I inspected the rest of the bar menu. Southern Recipes is proud of its wine list: two dozen varietals from Washington to California, Italy to New Zealand. While we were waiting, we scanned the appetizer menu — like the booze, the apps are also half-price during happy hour.
Ciao Bella pinot grigio beckoned. How can you resist a wine called “Hello, beautiful”? I was meant to be transported to Venice, and, you know, maybe I got halfway there. Described on the menu has having “peach and citrus” aromas, the light-bodied vino paired well with the chicken tenders appetizer that we ordered to keep us from getting totally bombed. White goes with chicken, right? I guess.
One more glance at the bar menu — because happy hour doesn’t end at Southern Recipes until 7 p.m., even on weekends. Then I saw it. The Folie a Deux Menage a Trois. No, the name has nothing to do with what you think, you dirty-minded animal, you. Rather, it denotes the mixture of three grapes: a zinfandel, a merlot, and a cabernet. Usually, I don’t like heavy cab, but this luscious red wine tasted like blackberry jam and made for a great dessert.
Sadly, I discovered that, while my martini was happy-hour priced, the wine was not. Only the house wines are $3. Two warnings: First, since Southern Recipes is mostly a restaurant with a little bar and is located in Arlington, it’s non-smoking. Second, the bar may be better than the restaurant itself. But there are precious few places to drink in Fun Central, a.k.a. the town with the most independent bar/restaurants in the 817, so I’m glad to add Southern Recipes to the list.
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