Happy Endings | dinner, etc

I'm not so good with birthdays.

My birthday is next Thursday, and I find myself drowning in the familiar pit of despair associated with the yearly internal struggle concerning my ordinary and inefficient existence, as evidenced by the fact that I've plodded the earth for one more year--bringing the grand total of passed time to just shy of a quarter of a century--yet still have failed to blip on the world's radar, i.e., the social radar of success as measured by the Recognition Trifecta (tm) of Wealth, Endorsement and Long Bouts of Good Luck (if you have all three, you're usually viewed as pretty successful). My birthday serves as the annual reminder, and I always battle almost a manic-depressive state of elation and depression at experiencing one more exhausting year of glorious life; it's surreal. I want to be the Cheshire cat, and I'm the rabbit.

But the solution, I've found, for the past three years or so, is to devote myself to celebrating my birthday as if it's the last great time I may ever have--who knows, it just might be--so as to draw my mind off the fact that I have yet to invent something cool, like an electric car or a portable dishwasher or a gluten-free pound cake that tastes just like the real thing (as if I was trying), and to focus on the fact that I have friends and family who love me, and in the grand scheme of things, considering all I've done and seen up until now, my life is pretty sweet.

This week, I decided on a week-long celebreezy that kicked off on Thursday night at a bar in Gritwood called Happy Endings. Great name. I'd never been there before, but after having the place recommended to me three times in one week, I decided it was time. Ambled my way over, solo after work, to meet my friend Bellini (she gets dizzy off half a Bellini), so we could have dinner, shoot the shit and see where the night took us.

Happy Endings was a happy surprise. Well...the food was mediocre: bar food with a struggling-at-upscale twist that missed the intended mark but washed down easy given the wrestler-strong cocktails. I had their classic cosmo, and Bellini tackled the Rub My Raspberry (that's right) Lemon Drop.

The food portions, on the other hand, were enormous. We both ordered appetizers, supposedly, but finished nearly too full to have dessert. Nearly. Ordering the plate of fresh cookies (one sugar, two oatmeal, two chocolate chip), which came partnered with a glass of cold milk (I handed that off to Bellini, natch), was probably a bad choice, given the amount of food we scarfed down. But I can't say no to cookies! They, too, were only ok--better than some, and they were warm, so that was good--but I ate them anyway. So by the time our friends joined as after our meal, we were both a little too full to enjoy the game of beer pong that highlights Happy Endings' already convivial charm on Thursday nights.

The restaurant space is big, and the crowd is boisterous. Even when Bellini and I were there with just the post-work crowd, the bright wood, scratched tables, hot waiter and laughing patrons made me glad to be. Plus, they have a wheel of fortune of drink specials (whatever drink the wheel lands on becomes the special until next spin), and as the Birthday Girl En Residence, I got to spin. Sadly, I missed out on granting the entire bar $5 car bombs, and instead everyone got 2-for-1 Trump vodka. Boring! What ever, I was too full to drink. Milk (and cookies) *was* a bad choice. Luckily, we decided to walk it off by heading up the street to the Roosevelt Hotel, which offers a fabulous jazz night on Thursdays (free cover!) at their sultry street-level bar, Teddy's. A must-do, it was chill and free and, despite the mediocre star-candy, made me forget I was in Gritwood at all. Great night, perfect start.

the food: Fish and chips, not your traditional. It's breaded chunks of ahi tuna with sesame-wasabi fries and a soy dipping sauce. Weird but good-weird. Sharing recommended!
the mood: A frat party on a good night, before the freshmen show up.

in five: 4/5, definitely would like to go back, for the vibe and drinks, if not the eats.

get happy: http://www.thehappyendingbar.com/index.html