Happy Hour: Local 360 scrupulously sources its food, even at the bar

Happy Hour |

A windy Monday in Belltown, and the main strip is still quiet when I stroll into Local 360 with a burger craving at 4 p.m.

Bar man says the beef isn't ready yet.

To double-check, he wanders to the kitchen, then returns to confirm that, yep, beef isn't ready yet.

This new Belltown joint, with its eat-local mantra and sustainable approach that reaches even to bar food, doesn't buy ground beef. It buys the whole cow and employs its own butcher. The hamburger meat is different each day, depending on what's available: some chuck and rib-eye is ground one afternoon. Maybe some chuck and short rib on another day. Pork fat is added if the beef looks lean.

Local 360, its name a reference to its mission to source ingredients within a 360-mile radius, is the latest of many to raise the bar-food bar in this barhopping 'hood. The quality of happy-hour food has never been better in Belltown.

Fried pumpkin seeds, deviled duck eggs and rabbit-liver mousse are offered on the happy-hour menu at Local 360. Available too are the usual suspects: fries, chicken wings, corn dogs and a burger that was nicely charred outside and pink inside. All are excellent.

(I didn't wait around for the burger to be ready, but came back a couple days later for it.)

Local 360 is obsessively attentive in the sourcing of its happy-hour food but overlooks the comfort of its patrons. It has some of the most uncomfortable bar stools around. I nearly fell off mine. I saw a patron fidget in her seat for a good five minutes.

Local 360 also features a late-night happy hour. It's good hangover food. There's "tête de cochon," essentially pig head — tongue, jowl, cheeks and brain, poached in pork fat. It's breaded and deep fried, served over French toast and topped with a fried egg, the entree drenched in maple syrup. Tasted a bit like your sausage-egg-and-French-toast breakfast, surprisingly.

To finish the night, some deep-fried peanut-butter balls, served with jelly and with a glass of milk to wash it all down.

Local 360, 2234 First Ave., offers happy hour 3-6 p.m. Monday-Fridays and again 10 p.m.-midnight Sundays-Thursdays and 10 p.m.-1 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. Happy hour features $1-$10 food, and $4-$5 beer, wine and cocktails (206-441-9360 or www.local360.org).

Tan Vinh: 206-515-5656 or tvinh@seattletimes.com