Midtown Happy Hour: Snag a Free Slice at Naples 45

If you like to eat, chances are you like to drink (read: a lot of you are freakin’ lushes), so I thought maybe it was time to introduce a happy hour column to the site. Every week, our Happy Hour Correspondent “Mamacita” will post about a different bar in Midtown that fits the Midtown Lunch mentality: unhealthy food, not lame (unless it’s lame in a cool way), and most importantly… cheap.

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Naples 45 has long been on the ML radar because of their $2.50 (previously $1.50) take out slices after 2pm until closing. In fact, I think Zach was still working for ‘the man’ back when he wrote about them. How’s that for a flashback! Well, I’m a woman of slender means so when commenters mentioned that they offer free pizza during happy hour I headed over to check out the deal.

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I started out sitting on the patio and got a basket of excellent crusty Italian bread with a better-than-average dish of extra virgin olive oil. The patio is also a great place to have a full dinner, if you don’t mind the noise from the Grand Central area cabs and pedestrian traffic. There is plenty of people watching to be had and this seem to be the go-to spot for large corporate groups from the offices in the surrounding area.

All was fine and dandy until we asked what the happy hour specials were. We were told happy hour is only from 3pm-5pm with $3 beer. Gasp! But it was 6pm when we all arrived at Naples 45! Seriously, how many people do you know that get off work before 5pm? What kinda stunt were they pulling here? Nevertheless, we decided to make the best of it and ordered a few 12oz Peroni for $5.50.

NAPLES 45 inside

Hell, the bread was really good and we’d be getting free pizza so this wasn’t a complete failure, right? The ‘freeloader’ special is only at the bar from 5pm to 7pm and here’s what you get.

NAPLES 45

It is your basic thin crust square slice of cheese pizza. Nothing that special but you’re talking to a girl that eats the free hot dogs from Rudy’s Bar and this is considerably more upscale establishment. So all things considered I guess it’s really not a bad deal.

THE + (what someone who likes this place will say)

  • Free cheese pizza, and it’s not the cheap greasy slice you get at 99 cent Pizza
  • If you get off early from work then the 3-5pm happy hour is a steal!
  • Nice upscale dinning and from the looks of everyone I saw, this is popular with the corporate crowd
  • The waitress said the $2.50 slices are available until closing!

THE – (What somebody who doesn’t like this place would say)

  • Lots of suits, this is popular with the corporate crowd
  • I can’t imagine getting off early enough to hit the happy hour
  • The pizza only comes out after happy hour is over. Lame!
  • The dinning menu is expensive. Does anyone still have an expense account?

Naples 45, 200 Park Ave. (at 45th St.), (212) 972-7000

Photos and post by Mamacita

20 Comments

  • mamacita, I would recommend a trip out of bounds to the Crocodile lounge. You get a pie with every pitcher of beer for FREE. that has to make up for Naples

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    My gf orders seamless from here pretty regularly and I enjoy her leftovers from time to time. Not a bad pizza for midtown.

  • User has not uploaded an avatar

    To clarify, the pizza she gets looks nothing like the free pizza there. Not sure what the deal is with that but the free pizza looks pretty bad.

  • The best looking pizza I ever saw looked ‘pretty bad’, and it wasn’t ‘free.’

    So, I passed, walked on, and never looked back at pizza.

    That was during my very first trip to NYC, over 40 years ago.

    Ever since that memorable trip to the ‘Big Apple’ I have been eating “REAL” food.

    Maybe that’s why I am 67 years old, in picture-perfect health, and happier than an Armadillo in Texas.

  • I’m really not going to say anything. Last time I “exposed” Naples 45 I made ML headlines… I’ll let the facts & pics speak for themselves. [insert something witty here] (it’s friday, at work and i’m tired.. so give me a break please)

  • I second Crocodile Lounge—while the drinks aren’t that cheap, the pizza more than makes up for it!

    I had my own happy hr last night and for the second week in a row,began serenading the hobos in madison park, and tried to sleep on a bench.

  • DocChuck eats real roadkill, real stale whitebread, and real government surplus cheese in his rusted singlewide in deep rural Arkansas. Keep it real, DocChuck

  • i rather walk abit more and get 3 slices from the pizza cart at 45th and park ave.
    DocChuck is hilarious, btw.

  • Oh man Goats, did your girlfriend have to fish you off of that park bench again ;-) LOL!

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    I was there yesterday after 2pm picking up some to-go lunch and the slices were $1.75 each, not $2.50.

  • That’s weird. I thought they were 1.91 each (1.75 +tax)? I had a slice like a few Fridays ago.

    Croc Lounge is awesome. It’s a free small pie for every drink. If you’re drinking alot, you’ll stuff your brains out.

    If I want cheap pizza though, I rather hit up 2 Bros.

  • When folks refer to DocChuck as hilarious, I wonder whether they feel this way because they believe

    a) the ridiculousness of his statements are what make it funny – no one would ever believe them, DocChuck included – DocChuck writes the stories with the intent to be outrageous

    or

    b) the fact that he believes every delusion he writes about is real is funny, in the same way that it is funny that William Hung thinks he is a good singer.

    I’d call option B the “trainwreck effect’

  • Yes, I am so impressed with how some people (and I use that term ‘people’ rather loosely) so clearly demonstrate the Pascal Principle.

    And, of course, as they reinforce us Psychologist’s beliefs that alcohol and other drugs can reduce people such as Louise (sorry, I meant ‘Fred’) to such pathetic babbling.

    But then, I suppose that a “free slice of pizza” could be equated with throwing a freshly killed christian to the lions in the Roman Coliseums.

    Whatever. Please carry on, but perhaps without ‘Fred’, if you please.

  • If DocChuck had finished out grade school, he might have learned that in the “christians vs lions” scenarios carried out in ancient rome, the christians were alive when they entered the arena.

    We can all hope that someday we will carry on here without DocChuck. Hope springs eternal.

  • The “new” DocChuck is more engaging and less “out there” than the original. The edge is truly gone.

  • lmao @ “freshly killed christians” . That should become the new “Grilled to perfection.”

  • One might also point out that the new DocChuck (same fellow, same delusions of intellect, wealth, and self importance) still
    –denigrates everything this site is about as well as the people who live in NYC
    –regularly demonstrates he knows little to nothing about any topic he chooses to address
    –veers wildly off topic, usually with a story of his faux accomplishments, faux wealth, faux education, or faux importance
    –has no business participating in a blog about a subject he purportedly has no interest in

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