Surprising Wine Finds: Hal’s Bar and Grill in Venice

We had dinner plans with folks who live on the Westside of LA, so we decided to meet up in Venice last Tuesday night. Since our friends aren’t totally adventurous diners and liked the “Houston’s-esque” vibe of the menu, we chose Hal’s Bar and Grill, a longtime neighborhood joint on Abbot Kinney Boulevard. We’ve always heard good things about Hal’s, more from the standpoint of atmosphere and reliability, rather than its cuisine or wine. So we went with moderate expectations.

Showing up a little early, we were asked to wait for the rest of our party at the bar. There, we discovered — much to our pleasure — that Tuesday night is “half price wine” night at Hal’s. It’s pretty simple: if you’re dining there (and not just boozing), you can choose from about a dozen wines from their regular list, but pay half of their normal bottle cost. We’d planned to write this up last week, when we might have remembered a bunch of the wines we could choose from…but we didn’t have a chance. All we can say is that the list didn’t just seem like close-outs or wines that the restaurant was over-inflating and then marking down. It was a genuine selection of better than average wines, that once discount was factored in, ended up at around retail (rather than restaurant) prices.

We do remember the wine we selected: it was a http://www.robertsinskey.com/?pid=493, and the restaurant’s regular price of $64 a bottle was slashed to $32. That’s just a great deal on this very drinkable wine — it’s less than we could charge for it if we stocked it in our store, and it’s less than K&L currently sells it for. No detailed tasting notes here, since this is about the wine deal and not really about the wine. But it was a fantastic quality for price, especially considering we were buying the wine in a restaurant. One of our biggest pet peeves is restaurant mark-ups, so this was just a huge plus for us.

Countering this, the food was a little bit overpriced. It was serviceable, but not a gourmand’s paradise. To make a Tuesday evening at Hal’s truly worthwhile, we suggest sticking to the burgers, salads, and the less complicated and less expensive entrées. You’ll end up with a fun evening out, at a better than average dining spot, with lots of vibrant neighborhood energy…and a fantastic wine deal to boot.

Hal’s can be found at 1329 Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice, CA. The phone number is 310-396-3105, or you can make reservations on Opentable.com.

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