The Spot: Daily Dose MidTown, 1928 East Highland Avenue, Suite F-107, 602-274-0334, www.dailydosegrill.com.
See Also: - 1130 the Restaurant: Happy Hour Report Card - Old Town's Daily Dose Opening Second Location - Sam Fox's The Yard, Featuring Culinary Dropout, to Open February 11: Think Live Music, Tetherball, and (Later) Oysters
The Hours: Happy Hour is offered daily from 4 to 8 p.m.
The Interior: Daily Dose MidTown offers a small covered patio, bar seating, and ample table spots, all of which are available for happy hour deals. The comfy booths are the way to go if you're looking to sit back, relax, and have a bite to eat and a drink or two. The servers are attentive and knowledgeable, dropping by each table every few minutes. Our favorite part was the tables themselves, which were a composite of pretty white and tan pebbles set in some sort of epoxy so they look like they're floating.
The Food: There are a lot of options on Daily Dose's happy hour menu, including street tacos, pretzel-bun sliders, spring rolls, and other entrée plates. This is great if you're looking to bring a large group to happy hour because there's something for everyone. However, when menus are that extensive, it's pretty likely that some things get overlooked.
Our spring rolls ($5.99) had fresh veggie insides, but the wrapper was soggy. The chorizo mac and cheese ($6.99) was filling and flavorful, but the cheese sauce was gritty. Our pretzel bun slider with chicken and blue cheese ($3.50) was decent, but the hand-cut French fries definitely stole the show. The chips and guacamole ($3.50) were pretty standard, albeit an Americanized take on the classic Mexican dip, but the salsa that accompanied the guac had an odd smokey taste, which was reminiscent of an ash tray. Overall, every bite was just okay.
The Drink: Like the food menu, Daily Dose also offers many different drink specials. With $5 glasses of wine, $3.75 well cocktails, and $4 draft beers, their pricing is slightly higher for happy hour staples than most other restaurants. We went for a $5.75 specialty cocktail instead of going the standard route. Unfortunately, the vodka-based wildberry lemonade was pretty flavorless, with little lemon or berry flavor to be tasted. Heck, we couldn't even taste the vodka.
The Conclusion: If you want a happy hour with many options, Daily Dose is your place. However, all those options seem to overload the kitchen and bar, and everything turns out mediocre. Maybe if they focused on perfecting a few things, their menu would really shine.
Grade: C
