Friday, March 19, 2010

Vancouver (WA) Happy Hour: Chevy's

Posted by Kelly

What: Chevy's
Where: 4315 NE Thurston Way, Vancouver, WA
When: Mon-Fri 3-7pm
Honeys Heart: It's fast!

Living in Portland for the last 5 years has made me, well, a bit of a restaurant snob. Yeah, it's true. In Portland there are endless restaurant options, all equally as delicious as the last and usually priced more reasonably than chain restaurants. My favorite examples of this are Pause, where a half pound, organic, fresh ground beef burger and fries is like $8.95, try finding something that delicious at Red Robin. Or check out Justa Pasta in NW for some great homemade pasta dishes, Olive Garden has nothing on them.

Okay, enough chain restaurant bashing. They're not THAT bad. They actually have some benefits:


1.) They are predictable: You know exactly what you're going to get every time. They don't really change based on geographic area. It's like going to Starbucks in a foreign country. You know that you're going to get a coffee that tastes the same as it does in your home town.


2.) They have big dining areas: There will likely be open seating, if not in the restaurant then in the bar. Meaning you can get in, get served, and get out.

...okay so they have at least 2 benefits. Whatever. Point: my new job is taking me to new exciting places like Vancouver, WA. Well, maybe that's not very exciting, but we do have to go there for meetings about the Discovery Walk Festival happening at the end of April. Expecting traffic from Portland to Vancouver to be dreadful (the usual) we left with plenty of time to spare. Rocking the car pool lane we arrived in Vancouver 50 minutes before our meeting was planned to start. Time for HH? Yes.

We walked into Chevy's which was busy, but there was room at the bar. We sat down, each ordered a $3 blended original margarita (can't be bad!) and briefly reviewed the 50% off appetizer menu.


Five minutes later we ordered the nachos and chicken flautas. Fifteen minutes later we had our food. Twenty minutes later we were full. Five minutes later we had paid our bill and five minutes after that we were promptly arriving at our meeting.

The nachos were unique in that each chip was individually covered in beans, meat and cheese. In this case every chip is the best chip!


The chicken flautas claim to be "crispy," but I didn't find them incredibly crispy. They were filled with chicken and served with a unique dipping sauce (aka not salsa). Tasty. I feel like Mexican food (much like pizza), is generally satisfying and hard to completely ruin, so we left quite satisfied.


Overall not bad, no Por Que No?, but it's not trying to be. After we ordered we noticed people heading over to a "do-it-yourself" taco bar...this looked even quicker and probably no more expensive. I'm pretty sure we'll be back at Chevy's before our next meeting trying out the taco bar and enjoying a post long day, pre-meeting marg!