In addition to the $5 daily specials (whiskey flights Tuesdays and caipirinha Thursdays, for example), there are $5 cocktails from noon to 5 p.m. The Friday happy hour offers half-priced wines and $5 specialty cocktails. nightly) featuring shrimp spring rolls, oysters en brochette, cougeres, and shrimp and andouille calas. As iconic as the Creole restaurant itself, French 75 serves classic cocktails with high-shelf spirits and offers a bar menu (served 6-10 p.m. The award-winning and accolade-gathering French 75 sports a vintage bar, custom built in the 1800s for another restaurant and eventually acquired by Arnaud’s owners, and has come a long way from being the restaurant’s “gentlemen only area” back when it was owned by the Cazenave family. These guys below are serious about what goes into every glass and onto every small plate, and about who gets to make it and serve it. Fortunately, if you’re willing to venture outside of peak drinking hours, the world is your oyster (sometimes literally, as Red Fish Grill and Bourbon House offer oyster-centric happy hours). You could order the “3-4-1” specials on Bourbon Street, but these deals generally prioritize booze quantity over quality. The French Quarter-based bars and restaurants we recommend below take it up a notch in terms of the quality of the ingredients the inventiveness of the dishes and the cocktails the bargain factor compared to the regular price you’d pay for the same outside the happy hour and, of course, the level of expertise that goes into the preparation. And, beyond the obvious pleasure of socializing and unwinding they provide, happy hours are a surefire way to sample the restaurant’s cuisine or bask in a place’s ambiance - at a fraction of a price. Finding world-class food and expertly crafted cocktails at beyond-reasonable prices is easy enough in New Orleans on any day, but who can resist the lure of trying the best cocktails this city has to offer at a deep discount, along with some refined bar food compressed to a bite size and a small plate? In New Orleans, happy hours tend to start a little earlier and stretch a little longer.