So this is a review that's been a *long* time coming (I've just been chronically overwhelmed for an…read moreequally long time.) I haven't been here often, but I *was* here right around when they opened, wherein I determined that the food ranged from quality but a bit overpriced, to just overpriced, a feeling I would still hold, generally speaking. Great vibe, solid service, but maybe a little pretentiously priced (and/or it's just stupid expensive to run a restaurant in this area, granted.) And with *super* pretentiously-priced cocktails, for how relatively simple they mostly are (if I'm gonna spend $18+ plus tip on a drink, I expect Baby Gee-level cocktails.) They also had an impressive wall of craft beer on tap, but also a bit pricey, especially compared to places not on 2nd street, so there was never a particular *draw*. But then I never actually finished reviewing it, because I'm super behind.
Anyway, then also not particularly recently, they launched a happy hour, which at the time, especially for this particular part of Long Beach, was pretty stupidly good, with $5 decent sized smashburgers (6 with cheese, 10 with cheese and also fries), as well as $5 craft beer, pretty much all of them, including the fancy, exciting stuff (exciting if you're a nerd like me, the barrel aged stuff, for instance). They also had one specific half hour at the time, which I'd like to immortalize as a super fun idea, where one specific cheap but craft beer was some stupid price, I think like a dollar, but since they had a whole wall of rotating craft beer, a *different* specific cheap craft beer any given day. That's not relevant at all to my current review, but it was fun. Anyway, I still didn't write a review like a year ago when I took advantage of that happy hour, though I did take advantage of it a solid couple of times.
Skip forward again to just a few weeks ago, I happened to be attending an event in the general area again, an event that was going to involve more alcohol than food and for which having a happy-hour-timed dinner in the area was going to be useful, so I figured I'd check out whether the happy hour was still there, and it was. At least as of a few weeks ago, the happy hour (3-6 weekdays) was still a thing, and it had gone up a whopping 55 cents per item. Ends up being effectively ~$17 plus tip for a quality smashburger, quality fries and a craft beer, though they didn't have as *many* of the fancy (barrel-aged or equivalent) stuff as they had the first time, they did still have some, and it was still $5.55 for any beer on draft they had. So happy hour wise, that's a pretty good price for this part of the country, I'd say. Obviously only since the burgers and fries *are* also absolutely quality burgers and fries. Not quite as wonderful as my gold standard smashburger at The Stache, perhaps, but still a great smashburger.
My opinion on spending almost 20 bucks for what is effectively still just an old fashioned, hasn't changed, though. :p