The Place:

Primo, 1106 Eighth Ave., 547-7466, FIRST HILL.The Hours: Primo’s has a short happy hour. It begins daily at 5 p.m., ends one hour later and restarts at 10 p.m. ending at close. “Close” is 11 p.m. on weeknights and midnight on weekends, so it really just adds another hour or so to your available happy-hour experience. The Deal: 10 food items, including stromboli and a one-topping pizza, drop to $5 with a drink purchase. The drink requirement can be satisfied with a $4 beer, well, or generously poured house wine. While most of the items are basically appetizers, the stromboli is the star of the happy-hour menu. It’s essentially an enormous rolled, stuffed pizza, filled with your choice of any three pizza toppings. The Digs: Primo is a somewhat confusing space to walk into. An extended canopy reaching toward Eighth Avenue implies that you’re headed into a large, East Coast-style Italian restaurant. But once inside, the rounded ceiling, antique look, smaller dining room, and prominent bar have almost the feel of a speakeasy. The interior so well matches the historic building across from Town Hall where Primo sits that I assumed the first time I saw it that the restaurant was as old as the building itself.The stroke of 10 finds six people at the bar, chatting at a volume that implies they may have been there for a bit. The comfort everyone has with each other suggests they’re regulars. People pop out in twos for a smoke, leaving purses and jackets in the care of their fellow patrons.The Verdict: At most food-focused happy hours, you pick a few items from a list and a server plops them all down in front of you at once. A steep discount on the food doesn’t generally accompany a full-service meal.But at Primo, perhaps because the happy hour really just bookends dinner, our server treated it as if we were there for dinner. She immediately took our drink orders. When our food selections included a Caesar salad, that arrived at the table first. She even halved our meatball/onion/pepperoncini stromboli for us. The food itself was just right for two hungry late-night diners. The salad lettuce was crisp, the stuffed jalapenos generous, the stromboli arrived with fresh marinara sauce served on the side, and the wine (filled nearly to the brim) tasted sweet and smooth. Primo’s happy hour may be short, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find another perfectly satisfying, full-service Italian meal this cheap.Follow Voracious on Twitter and Facebook.