Happy Hour Gets Hot in Bangor: Blaze ~ Craft Beer and Wood Fired Flavors

One of the many reasons Amy & I make a good duo when hunting for our next happy hour spot is that we are both super adventurous and crazy when it comes to food. My foodie partner in crime just got back from Vietnam and filled me in on the extent of her meal adventures. Let's just say that is a blog post entirely on it's own.

When this happy hour blogging adventure began, it all started at Blaze Bangor. Amy arrived back into Bangor after being in Vietnam for 4 months and we agreed to meet at Blaze to catch up. This happy hour is one that we stumbled into completely by chance. [Blaze had just opened at this point so the menu items and deals may have changed. I'm dreaming up a second trip right now to find out for certain - Stay tuned...] half price cocktails, 25% off appetizers and raw oysters for $1.25. It was a night of indulgence. I love it when people squirm at what I am daring enough to eat and drink. I'm not afraid of exotic foods or trying a craft beer with some crazy name like Smutty Nose.

Here are the goods:

Duck Fat Poutine

I was all over this. Poutine is one of my favorite guilty pleasures when it comes to food! This is a staple in Northern Maine and when I saw a duck fat version of this on the menu I had to taste it. The name is exactly what it means: the fries and gravy are cooked with duck fat! Amy and I both loved this.

 Raw oysters on the half shell
I love anything seafood. And to my knowledge, there aren't any restaurants in Bangor that serve raw oysters like this. [If there are places in or around the area I would love suggestions - or just good places to get seafood in general!] Served on the shell with lemon, horseradish and cocktail sauce - some of my favorites.

The craft beer selection is absolutely insane. There are over 2 dozen taps with a variety of micro brews to try. I did get a brown ale that was nutty in flavor and just absolutely smooth. I want to say it was a Smutty Nose brew but things got a little hazy somewhere between the food, the cocktails and the beer. Don't worry, when I go back I will pay more attention..like I said - night of indulgence...

Thai Sweet Chili Wings
Meet the hottest wings that I have ever had. I am a hot sauce fanatic. I love making my food spicy. I have been known to eat hot peppers like candy. But these wings burned me! Luckily, I remembered a trick from Man vs. Food, in which you rip the meat from the bones instead of putting your lips to the wing. We had to ask for a side of blue cheese to ultimately save the day. I would not order this sauce again but would try one of the more mild options.

Pink Gin and Tonic
Pink and delicious looking, a little too sweet for my taste but very good.

Overall, we had a really good experience. The response from Bangor to this restaurant seems to be pretty positive. The restaurant is booked with reservations all the time, and it is recommended to make one. The bar is pretty spacious and makes for a very nice spot to cozy up to for a very brilliant meal. This is food with passion and the atmosphere is beautiful. I really hope to see great things for Blaze.

Happy Hour at Kobe Ninja House Japanese Grill & Sushi Bar

Hey Bangor bar eaters! Christina here with my first post. I reviewed Kobe Ninja House Japanese Grill & Sushi Bar on my other blog: Hippy Go Lucky Hoops when the place first opened up for business in October of 2012. By now, if you have been living in Bangor in the last couple of years, you have probably experienced what Kobe has to offer at the Hibachi grill. If you haven't been to the Hibachi yet - what are you waiting for!? It's one my favorite dining out experiences of all times. Of course it's perfect for birthdays, kids and adults both have a great time at this place. I know when I went with my Mom for her birthday the chef was feeding us sake bombs. Needless to say, we had a blast.

Recently I have had the chance to dine at Kobe on the other side of the restaurant: the bar! Amy and I met for happy hour a few weeks back and were delightfully surprised at the awesome happy hour deals we walked into. The atmosphere was quieter than all the excitement at the Hibachi tables, so it made for a perfect spot to chit chat.

For a peak at the happy hour menu, check out their awesome webpage. Serious props to this place for getting it right with the website. All of the information is clear and concise with what they promise inside. That's important!

The deal is every Tuesday & Thursday from 4-8: Half off appetizers (starting at just $2 and these are full size appetizers!) $4 cocktails, half price sushi rolls and half price entrees! My god as I'm writing this I'm already scheduling a date with Amy in my head for another round. I was pretty stoked about being able to get my usual favorites for half price. I had a bowl of edamame, a Philly roll & a Manhattan roll.

kobeninjahouse.com

We indulged in ridiculous sweet/girly/colorful drinks. I had a blue popsicle and Amy had a margarita I believe? Correct me if I'm wrong here. Also - what did you say it tasted like? Some kind of candy...they were pretty delicious. A bonus for this night was our awesome bartender. She was close to our age and we all were pretty much hitting it off like best friends. She was extremely new, but you could tell she was a natural behind the bar...it was just the sushi that she had to get used to. (I can relate, having served in a Japanese sushi bar briefly and a Chinese restaurant for 4 years.) After sipping off the rest of my blue frilly drink I ordered a more ballsy 22 oz Sapporo. To me, there is nothing better than imported Japanese beer with my raw fish.

Next time I want to go outside of the box a little bit and use the extremely awesome prices at happy hour to try some new things. I will be sure to update! The service was excellent, food and presentation was beautiful and the price a was certainly right. So next time the hibachi is full and the wait list is an hour long, head on over to the quieter side of things. You'll be surprised by what you will find!

The Ground Round.

Most chain restaurants have a happy hour so it was a pretty safe bet trying out the Ground Round. As it turns out, I have been to their late night happy hour before back in my waitressing days. The ladies and I used to hit the Ground Round after a night of serving jerk-faces at a different, local eatery in Bangor (I won't mention names, they did not have a happy hour so it's not really worth mentioning anyway!). We would always sit at the bar and order at least two appetizers - as that is part of the deal - and likely a tall, cheap beer.

The details of the Ground Round Happy Hour are:

3-6 Monday through Friday and 10pm-close Monday through Sunday (the late night happy hour!)
$1.99 Appetizer with the purchase of one at full price.
$2.99 Mugs of Bud, Bud Light, Coors, & Miller Lite


In addition, the Ground Round also has some sort of daily special each day of the week.

A fun addition to happy hour - even more deals!!

We went on a Wednesday and were not interested in the "All you can eat rib feast". I did however get a Pinnacle vodka drink but note that it was actually more expensive than a well-vodka drink ($5 versus $4.50). I guess 50cents more isn't too bad for a slightly better, flavored vodka though!

Kid's pay what they weigh on Sundays and Thursdays? I don't want to be an asshole but I bet a lot of the kids that come through Ground Round weigh more than the actual cost of their kid's meal .... just saying. That doesn't seem like a deal to me... unless you have some tiny kids then, deal-city!!

Anyway, we took advantage of the appetizer deal and got one appetizer sampler and an order of nachos. The place was pretty packed for a Wednesday evening in the lounge/bar area. Our waitress was a nice, middle-aged or so woman. She messed up our order a bit - we asked for beef on the nachos and got chicken - and it took a while for me to get my second drink (a beer) but hey, it was busy and no one is perfect. Christina and I have both been waitresses, we can empathize, so complaints from us.

First drinks - well vodka and tonic, Pinnacle (some flavor I forget) and soda

 

 

Busy bar

 Finally, our food was exactly what you'd expect from a chain restaurant. It came out quick, it was greasy, filling, and delicious. While I may be a food snob at times, I can definitely get down with some unhealthy, chain restaurant bar food. Bring on the jumbo nachos.

So, since this was part of the happy hour deal, we got the appetizer sampler at full price ($12 I believe) and the nachos for a mere $1.99! Sweet deal if you ask me. Make sure your second appetizer is almost as expensive as the first so you are really getting your monies worth ...

So for 2 cocktails, 1 tall beer for me and 1 tall and 1 regular-sized beer for Christina, and these two sizable appetizers, we each paid under $20. Happy times were had!

Happy Times! The Happy Hour ...

I love everything about "Happy Hour". Having an early drink after a long day of work (well, for some people, I don't currently have a full-time job but I can still enjoy happy hour...), deals! (one of my favorite things ever), food, and friends. When I was in Vietnam with my parents we took a cruise where they had a happy hour. Our tour guide, Ruby, or Ngoc - his Vietnamese name which American's cannot pronounce correctly, must have forgotten the term for "Happy Hour" because he informed us that from 5pm-7pm there would be the "Happy Times!". This sounds equally as wonderful as a happy hour - if not better! Happy hour sounds so limiting, just one hour? Well, luckily that is not the case most of the time. Most places have several hours of happy so maybe "Happy Times" was more appropriate.

Bangor, Maine is not exactly a hot spot for restaurants and bars but it certainly could be worse! Being from New Jersey, I was a bit spoiled in the restaurant department - not to mention a serious food snob. There are definitely some perks, however, to living in a place with such a limited restaurant scene - I save money, I am getting pretty good at cooking, and my waistline appreciates not eating out all the time as well! But once in a while it sure is fun and relaxing to grab an after work drink and snacks with the ladies. 

That being said, there is a serious lack of the happy hour in Bangor. I feel this could be due to the fact that there are so few places to go, they don't really need to compete for your business with something like a happy hour. However, lucky for me, there are still several establishments that are willing to give me a half-priced appetizer and a cheap cocktail around 5pm during the week!

One small problem I've encountered is the lack of information on our local happy hours. Sure, if you go to a restaurant around the time of the happy hour you may get lucky and find out they have some deals, but not all of them do! As a result, my friend Christina and I have decided we'll take it upon ourselves to sample as many happy hours as we can (which could very easily be all of them) and report back! Fear not, we will let you know where the happy hours are and if they are any good! So that's my little intro for this blog. I hope it provides some valuable information for having the Happy Times!