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A Mano's $5 bar menu makes it easy to snack as you drink—and you won't have to leave work early to enjoy it.

Monday Mar 17, 2008.     By Erin Brereton

Lifestyle Feed

As I may have mentioned (in, oh, about every column I've written since 2005), I enjoy a little snack with my happy-hour cocktails—and nothing makes my 60 minutes more joyous than a deal.

What luck, then, that A Mano, the contemporary Italian eatery from the folks behind Bin 36—which is located basically under Bin 36, in a funky space that was formerly used for storage—has premiered a $5 bar menu. So, along with my liver and a friend, I went to check out the bargain bites last week.

Available in the bar or lounge area, the A Mano $5 menu has a number of items modeled after Italian bar snacks, called cicchetti (it just sounds so much nicer than "starters," doesn't it?).

My friend and I first ordered a half-carafe of pinot grigio ($14), a good deal if you know you're going to have more than one glass, which I usually do (a single serving of wine is $7, and we got more than a glass and a half each out of the carafe). Every patron gets another bargain automatically; the restaurant serves complimentary bottled water to the table.

The bar snacks are way nicer than the wings-and-dip choices many restaurants offer—and the servings are big enough to make a meal out of two or three portions. The choices include an Italian cheese plate, served with walnut bread; cured, mixed olives and roasted, rosemary-scented nuts. Since the two meals I'd had before that involved Easy Mac, I was delighted.

We started out with an order of the polenta fries (served with sun-dried tomato aioli sauce), bruschetta and a stromboli. The bruschetta trio and stromboli type change nightly. The night I stopped in, the tasty little pocket on the menu had chicken in it; they graciously offered to make me one without meat when I mentioned I was a vegetarian.

The polenta fries were beyond good; lightly crispy outside, soft inside and perfect to mix with the rich sauce. (I actually mixed everything with the sauce—but that's just how I roll.) The bruschetta was tasty (it's hard for anything with bread and seasonings not to be), but the stromboli was the clear winner. Both my friend and I agreed, it was hearty, tender and delicious.

When we had arrived earlier, we were told we had just missed the pizza special; from 5 to 7 p.m., A Mano's wood-oven pizzas are all just $5. So, after our bar snacks (which, truth be told, were enough to make a meal), we ordered a (non-$5) pizza anyway just to try it.

The pizzas are creative; one has wild mushrooms and caramelized onions, another has fennel sausage. We had the tamer margherita pizza—just cheese and tomatoes—which was nonetheless delicious, and the size of a regular pizza. It would be the perfect $5 after-work meal, paired with one of the bar's cocktails (there's a Limoncello martini, Danny DeVito!) or a glass of wine.

But the best thing about A Mano's happy hour is that it's not just an hour, and it's not awkwardly timed. Those happy hours that run from 4 to 6 p.m. are tricky; you have to run over after work and hurriedly order or miss the deal altogether (unless you can find a way to schedule a "doctor's appointment" at the end of the day once a week without the rest of your office thinking that you're dying).

All A Mano's $5 specials are available from 5 p.m. until close, which is around 10 p.m., leaving ample time before you have to head home. Which, after a delicious trio of sorbets, I did. But I'll be back.

Curious? Check out A Mano's bar snacks for yourself at 335 N. Dearborn St. Visit amanochicago.com or call (312) 629-3500.

Erin Brereton is our resident urban cowgirl on a bi-weekly search for life on the cheap. If you know of the mythic happy hour that she missed, do clue her in.