The key to an epic happy hour is simple: you want a place removed from wherever you spent your day, close enough to the job/home to be practical, just busy enough to provide the opportunity for socializing but laid-back enough to allow for deep sighs and decompression. Also: No bright lights or sudden movements.

Poison Girl
Predominantly a younger crowd, Poison Girl’s location near the epicenter of the Montrose hip wing lends it enough diversity to keep your after-work cocktails from falling into the hands of a bunch of young thugs who didn’t work all day and will probably be drinking for the next nine hours. Or you may run into exactly that.

Dark Horse
Rustic, never too busy during the day and possessed of enough rogue dive spirit to keep serious drinkers occupied, Dark Horse at happy hour can be cinematic. The TV is out of the immediate line of sight and – as any good bar TV should – acts as a supplement instead of a focal point. The jukebox can be a bit loud at times, but the overall mode is soothing after a long day breaking rocks.

Leon’s
It’s entirely routine to see an attorney winding down next to a dirt-covered city worker straight off the roads. Leon’s is one of the most diverse happy hour destinations around and is also enough of a designated nighttime spot to keep attendance numbers moderate during happy hour. This is a prime location for allowing happy hour to bleed into a full night on the town.

Rudyard’s
Happy hour at Rudyard’s can veer between packed (as the weekend nears) and sparse. Rudz’ capacity to host an ace happy hour is often overshadowed by its standing as one of the top Inner Loop nightspots, but if you’re in Montrose at quitting time, this is one of the best places to watch the sun go down on another workday.

Davenport
Some of the strongest drinks in town can be found sitting on bev-naps and coasters at the Davenport. Those drinks are more widely used by the nighttime crowd as cogs in the wheel of seduction, but this bar’s real bread-and-butter is providing a stellar happy hour venue for folks who work/live in and around Upper Kirby, Montrose and River Oaks.