Off the Strip Happy Hour. The Strip

The kitchen at Off the Strip has been turning out bistro comfort food since 2007, and the menu still reads like a neighborhood place that wandered onto Las Vegas Boulevard: fresh pastas, burgers, and a steak and chops menu that runs Thursday through Sunday evenings on the second floor. The building itself is part of the draw, two stories with three separate bars and a patio facing the Promenade foot traffic, so you can watch the line form for the High Roller while you work through a plate of calamari.

The weekday happy hour is one of the better center-Strip deals going. Monday through Thursday from 2 to 5 pm, house wine, well drinks, and beers all drop to $5, with beer pitchers at $25 if you brought company. The $10 appetizer list does the heavy lifting: signature chicken wings, shrimp cocktail, fried calamari, fried shrimp, a rolled NY strip, and a giant meatball that eats like a full entree. That is real food at prices you would expect a mile east of the Boulevard.

It sits next to O'Shea's on The LINQ Promenade and opens at 8 am daily for breakfast and brunch, which explains the mixed crowd of longtime locals and hotel guests who wandered in. A bar seat downstairs on a weekday afternoon is the move; the room stays genuinely relaxed for a spot fifty yards off the Strip.