For our first sortie out we started strong and visited the Elephant Bar in Cupertino, off Stevens Creek and Wolfe. They use the dual happy hour system, running from 3pm-7pm Mon-Fri and then have a secondary happy hour from 9pm - close seven days a week. With that in mind, let's dig into the review!
Prices & Selection:
Right off the bat I have to give Elephant Bar a thumbs up to their happy hour organization. They keep it simple, using a three sided menu. One side lists all the drinks, the second has all the food and the third just shows off a random item they're promoting.
Their arrangement is very straightforward, breaking everything down into price brackets. Their drinks run in dollar increments, from $2.00 to $5.00 and their food follows the same fashion but from $3.00 to $6.00. Each of the drink price points has between two and three items, and each of the food price points has three up to a whopping five items.
In total, there are thirteen different drinks (not including the different options in beers on tap) and seventeen different things to eat, all at very reasonable prices. Some of the standouts are the house margarita for $2.00, Long Island Iced Tea for $4.00 and a full on burger and fries for $5.00.
Rating?
Taste:
Elephant Bar's normal food is pretty solid; and their happy hour food holds true to that too. It's nothing that you'll be writing home to your mother about, but you won't be regretting picking it up either. There were six of us, and each of us ordered a different item off the menu, scoring us a table filling twelve different items. (Gotta have variety to test out a place!) The standard bar type food was standard bar food tasty, chicken tenders, sweet potato fries, artichoke dip, that sort of stuff.
The things that stood out a bit more for me were the slightly more random items. Quick seared Ahi isn't something I would normally order as I'm not a huge fan of raw or mostly raw fish, but a friend picked it up and I gave it a try and it was surprisingly tasty. The chicken and lettuce wraps were very good, with a nice mix of crunch and flavor.
Overall their food was a mix of your standard bar type stuff and a more Asian/seafood selection. No one thing was punch you in the face amazing but everything was consistently enjoyable to eat.
Rating?
Service:
This may sound like hyperbole, but I'm going to throw it out there anyway. The server we had was one of the best I've ever encountered. He was funny and attentive, and really went out of his way to make it an enjoyable experience. He brought us birthday candles in little jars to help light up our dark table (see below for more on that) and when one of the gals wanted a Red Bull and Vodka, he bought himself a Red Bull and filled her vodka up with part of it so she could pay the happy hour vodka only price instead of 5 bucks more for the mixed drink.
There's not much else to say in regards to service really. Very positive overall.
Rating?
Everything Else:
The weirdest part of the night was sitting pretty much in the dark. When we arrived, the place was pretty kicking, so instead of waiting around for 30+ minutes we opted to sit out on the patio. Apparently, however, Elephant Bar's landlord controls the outside light timer and forces it to turn off very early, leaving us with a quite unlit experience. It wasn't horrible as it's close to the street and there's a decent amount of ambient light both from that and from inside, but it was still a little silly in my opinion. I realize that that's outside of their control, but it's still something to keep in mind when you're considering potential nights out.
On a happier note, their secondary happy hour starting at 9pm is one of the earlier you'll find. Most other places won't start theirs until 10pm, if they even have a second one at all.
Rating?
And now for the (drum roll please) FINAL RATING:
And let me leave you with a picture of our table filled with tasty food and drink.
No comments:
Post a Comment