Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Happy Hour

For length and value together, Lamonte at 557 Driggs Ave, a Featured partner of Happy Hour NYC: $2.50 oysters, $2.50 shrimp cocktail and $10 martinis, all day Sunday through Thursday and until 7pm Friday and Saturday. For pure cheapness, Union Pool runs $3 Miller High Life and $3 shots daily from 5 to 9pm – four hours, seven days, with the taco truck in the backyard. And Lighthouse BK holds the dollar oyster, daily 4 to 6pm.

Lamonte’s, on Driggs Avenue a block from the Bedford L – open to close, Sunday through Thursday, with $2.50 oysters, $2.50 shrimp cocktail and $10 martinis and bubbles. On Friday and Saturday the same deal runs until 7pm rather than all day. After that, the longest windows in the neighborhood are Union Pool (daily 5-9pm), Banter Bar ($3 beers and wells daily until 8pm), Blinky’s (Mon-Fri 5-8pm) and The Richardson (until 6pm daily, from 2pm Friday to Sunday).

Lighthouse BK at 145 Borinquen Pl holds the dollar price: $1 oysters daily 4 to 6pm, though the doors don’t open until 5pm Monday to Friday, so weekdays give you one hour. Lamonte on Driggs runs $2.50 oysters and $2.50 shrimp cocktail all day Sunday through Thursday. Layla on south Bedford adds $2 oysters to its weekday aperitivo hour, and Francie’s bar does $10 oysters and $9 littleneck clams. Maracuja on Grand St, long the neighborhood’s other oyster stop, no longer serves food at all.

Lamonte fires 12-inch pizzas from its own kitchen on Friday and Saturday nights, 11pm to 1am, which pairs neatly with a happy hour that started that afternoon. The same team runs Lamonte Pizza across the street at 558 Driggs – NY-style and grandma pies plus Argentinian empanadas, with cheese slices at $4, specialty slices at $5, whole pies $30-34, and a Friday and Saturday close of 12:30am. It’s shut on Tuesdays. See our guide to the best pizza in NYC for the citywide picture.

Bar Blondeau on the Wythe Hotel’s sixth floor runs “Sunset Hour” weeknights 5 to 7pm – $11 cocktails, $9 wine, bar seats only – with the full Manhattan skyline. Berry Park’s heated 100-seat rooftop runs $5 specials, though the venue doesn’t publish the window, so call ahead. Westlight, 22 floors up at the William Vale, skips the deal entirely: go at opening – 4pm weekdays, noon on weekends – and one full-price drink buys the best view in Brooklyn.

Yes, and the south side owns them. Union Pool runs $3 beers and shots daily 5-9pm, Banter Bar pours $3 beers and wells every day till 8pm, and Maracuja and Kinda Nice both run 5-7pm seven days. Lighthouse BK’s $1 oysters get their full 4-6pm run on Saturday and Sunday, when the doors open at noon. The Richardson opens at 2pm Friday through Sunday with $11 cocktails until 6. Lamonte covers Sunday with its all-day window; on Friday and Saturday its deal ends at 7pm.

North to south: The Bedford (110 Bedford) runs its mini martini list weekdays 4-7pm, Hole In The Wall (292 Bedford) pours $5 drafts and $10 cocktails from 3pm – an hour earlier than most of the avenue – and Layla (352 Bedford) runs its aperitivo hour, $12 negronis and $2 oysters, weekdays 4-6pm in the backyard. One block east on Driggs, Lamonte’s oyster-and-martini window runs all day Sunday through Thursday.

Brooklyn. Every bar on this page is in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, zip 11211 or 11249 – the neighborhood directly across the East River from Manhattan, reachable on the L at Bedford Ave, the G at Metropolitan Ave and the JMZ at Marcy Ave. Colonial Williamsburg is a different Williamsburg roughly 350 miles south in Virginia, and search results for the two get mixed together constantly. If you want a happy hour near the College of William and Mary, this is not your page.

Usually discounted drafts, well drinks, house wine and one or two cocktails, plus a short food list – and in Williamsburg the food half is unusually good. Concretely, right now: $1 oysters and $10 everything, cocktails, wine, burger and nachos, at Lighthouse BK daily 4-6pm. $5 drafts, $10 cocktails and $6 sliders at Hole In The Wall weekdays 3-6pm. $3 Miller High Life and $3 shots at Union Pool daily 5-9pm. $9 cocktails, $6 drafts and $27 wine carafes at Maracuja daily 5-7pm. What is almost never included: top-shelf spirits, the full cocktail list, and anything at a table when the deal says bar seats only – Le Crocodile and Bar Blondeau both restrict theirs to the bar.

Two different Mexican restaurants get called this, which is most of the confusion. De Mole on Hope Street, at 2 Hope St, is the neighborhood spot most locals mean. Mole Mexican Bar and Grill, at 178 Kent Ave, is a separate small group with Manhattan locations. Mole says on its own site that it runs a happy hour menu but publishes no days, times or prices for it, and De Mole publishes none either – so we are not printing numbers we cannot verify. Call ahead. If you want a Mexican-leaning deal on the South Side you can actually plan around, Blend Williamsburg at 291 Kent Ave runs 11am to 7pm Monday to Thursday, with $40 bottomless tacos and margaritas on Tuesdays.

In Williamsburg they largely are not – the national numbers behind that question are about weekday office drinking, and this is not an office neighborhood. What has actually changed here is the shape of the deal. Straight percentage-off pricing is rarer. What replaced it is the flat $10 price, at Lighthouse BK and Cozy Royale, the bar-seats-only carve-out at Le Crocodile and Bar Blondeau, and the late window instead of the early one: Gran Torino from 9:30pm, BABA on Withers from 10pm, Cozy Royale 10 to 11:30pm. The deals did not disappear. They moved later, got flatter, and moved to the bar.

Our working line is North 12th Street and Nassau Avenue, with McCarren Park as the hinge. Anything above it – Five Leaves, Chez Ma Tante, Greenpoint Fish and Lobster, OTB – is Greenpoint and lives on our Greenpoint happy hour guide. It matters because most Williamsburg happy hour lists quietly bundle the two, which makes them look bigger than they are and makes the walk longer than you expect: Bedford Ave to Franklin St is about twenty minutes, not five. East Williamsburg is the other edge, out past the BQE toward Bushwick, where Cozy Royale, BABA on Withers and The Richardson sit – and that we do count as Williamsburg.