Por Dr. Ink

The days when bars often dished out free noshes during happy hour are not completely gone. Why so many of them don’t anymore is beyond me, considering that by all accounts customers shell out more bucks on extra drinks when complimentary peanuts, pretzels, potato chips or any salty morsel sits beneath their chins.

Leave it to the fiercely retro and dimly lit Albie's Beef Inn on Hotel Circle to get it right. Aside from free chips and salsa, happy-hour customers are also afforded ham sandwiches on white bread, which is kind of strange but acceptable, as well as some type of hot nourishment from a chafing dish — all at no extra cost.

Add to the equation double shots of liquor poured into basic well drinks at the regular price of $5.75, and it begins to feel like you’re tumbling back in time to when Albie’s was established in 1962.

The bar lounge, which sits between two spacious dining rooms, features dark wood-paneled walls festooned with old, faded paintings of topless women. Arched portals lead from one room to another amid black leather booths and antiquated light globes. From the street you’d never guess such a marvelous, quirky time capsule awaits inside.

Despite its location on Travel Lodge property, Albie’s is family-owned. And according to our attentive short-skirted waitress, the place attracts more locals than hotel guests, a mix of young, old and in between. In the evenings, on Wednesdays through Saturdays, musicians take to the electric keyboard stationed a few feet away from the bar to engage drinkers in rousing sing-alongs, some of them already primed from the heavy-duty drinks of happy hour.

While grazing on the free ham sandwiches as well as soy-sauced chicken strips from the chafing dish, our cocktails served in rocks glasses quickly took effect.My cohort’s vodka and ice tea was high-octane, with the tea barely revealing its flavor — an observation rather than a complaint, he noted. The gin and tonic I ordered was also strong, reminding me of how they used to be made before bars implemented shot-measure devices on their liquor bottles. Back then, a loose shot often equated to two.Walking out of Albie’s is no less shocking than walking in. After imbibing a while within its Old World, low-lit environment, the sunshine washing over the parking lot was painfully blinding. But much like the free food, it was also the sobering jolt we needed for getting home.