This Isn't My First Rodeo (Drive)

So when undertaking your review of vaunted, favorite, respected, and otherwise well-known happy hours of the greater Los Angeles area, why not begin with one most people know about? To wit, today we begin our reviews with the venerable McCormick and Schmick's.

This is one of those places that you've at least heard about. The Yelp boards teem with reviews. It attracts a broad and diverse crowd, one disparate and varied in vital areas such as shagginess of hair, knowledge of Smiths, passport held, and rubberness of necking. That's right, this place (at least the one in Beverly Hills) is a tourist destination. This fact would normally be enough to send me screaming for Echo Park, but since I'm bent on providing a public service here, and tourists need to save money on pricey food and beverages too I rolled up my sleeves, popped my collar, put a decoy shopping bag or two under my arm, and waded in.

I wish now that I hadn't.

"Wait," you might say. "Doesn't this place have a great happy hour food menu, with prices ranging from a mere $1.99 to no more than $6.95?" Don't they have drink specials? What could your beef with this venerable institution be?"

It sucks. That's my beef.

The food is blah, the service is slow, the crowd is terrible, and each day only allows one (1) drink special! No, you can have more than one drink at happy hour prices. But on any given day, there is only one type of drink that is on special. For example, we went on a Friday. Fridays mean Mojitos are on special. Regardless of the fact that I hate Mojitos, I had to suck down three of them if I wanted to catch some Happy Hour happiness. Every other drink behind the bar or on the menu was regularly priced. An I do NOT roll regularly-priced. I roll discounted. It's the way I was raised. To be fair, on Mondays, they do a "well drinks" special, but that's not close enough for this guy's brand of rock-and-roll.

So let's quickly tick off the sins, intentional or not, of McCormick and Schmick's and its so-called Happy Hour.

1) In Beverly Hills and on Rodeo Drive.

2) Crawling with tourists.

3) So-so food, presented as one might toss a bowl of gruel on a table full of orphans, by questionably qualified and seldom available servers (by the way, I worked in the restaurant industry for many, many years, in every imaginable position. I'm allowed to say stuff like this).

4) Only one drink on special. Regardless of how good, cheap, or frequent this drink is, that's a stupid, stupid way to do a Happy Hour special.

In sum, I guess that I learned a valuable lesson during my disappointing trip to McCormick and Schmick's -- even a place that brings people in with the help of a Happy Hour can still be guilty of coasting by on reputation alone. The price was right, but the food, drinks, location, and pretty much everything else were all wrong.

Vitals: The Happy Hour here runs from 4:00pm till 6:30pm, with an encore performance from 9:45pm until 10:30pm. The drink specials are limited, and the food is pretty average. The one major bright spot is the burger and fries for $2.99 -- not a bad-sized portion, either, but get this -- you can't request how you want it done. Huh?