In our November issue, we highlighted neighborhood restaurants that offer fool-proof, gourmet feasts for Thanksgiving. You can get it all in one trip at Eatzi’s Market, which serves up everything from the turkey and gravy to the decor for the table. And being inside, you kind of feel like you’ve really escaped to Europe for just a few minutes.

Other options include TJ’s Seafood Market – Yes, seafood. Supposedly, some historians agree that it was more likely the pilgrims ate lobsters, mussels, clams and oysters rather than turkey. TJ’s offers a variety of platters, but today’s the last day to place an order before the holiday.

If you want to actually go out to eat for Thanksgiving, The Mercury will offer a Thanksgiving buffet 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Thursday featuring options like prime rib, shrimp, oysters and of course turkey and dressing. It costs $49.99 for adults and $24.99 for children 10 and under. Be sure to make reservations though as seating is limited. Call 972.960.7774.

Consistency is the difference between great cheap wine and ordinary cheap wine. Two Buck Chuck, for all of its acclaim, does not taste the same from year to year, and its quality goes up and down with regularity. Even better made wines, like Meridian, suffer from this problem. One vintage will be terrific and the next will be much less than that (which is why its chardonnay is dropping out of the $10 Hall of Fame next year).

Bogle’s wines, on the other hand, do not have this problem. I have been writing about cheap wine for almost 20 years, and for almost 20 years I have always depended on Bogle. It has never let me down. The petite sirah ($10, purchased, widely available) is the winery’s showpiece, an outstanding example of the producer’s quality and consistency. It is always clean and always varietally correct, which means it’s not the same thing as a syrah and is not made to taste like one. This is saying something given the current trend toward blending varietal wines to make them sweeter and fruitier in a misguided attempt to appease the American palate.

Look for berry fruit, a touch of oak, and tannins at the end that give the wine some welcome oomph. This is a burly red meat wine — pot roast and gravy, stews that have been cooking all day, and the like. Highly recommended, and the kind of cheap wine that makes writing about cheap wine a pleasure.

One shameless plug: I’m celebrating the third birthday of my wine blog, The Wine Curmudgeon, with prize giveaways the rest of the week. Today, it’s a bottle of Tormaresca Neprica — stop by and enter the contest.

Two neighborhood restaurants have teamed up to support Dallas Moustache, a nonprofit movement for men’s health. II Cane Rosso and Snappy Salads will host the Fu Man Chew at 5 p.m. Nov. 19 at Snappy Salads.

It’s basically a $25 family-style smorgasbord of food, including salad,pizza, non-alcoholic drinks and dessert. The dinner is BYOB or wine. Proceeds benefit Dallas Moustache. The organization supports Movember USA, which inspires men to grow their beards throughout the month of November to help raise awareness about prostate and testicular cancer.

Reservations for the event are strongly recommended. Call 972.991.7627.

In case you don’t have handy your calendar of random “holidays” – today’s National Bundt Cake Day. And Nothing Bundt Cakes at Preston and Royal is celebrating by offering a free bundlet during business hours today only.

I had a Groupon for this little bakery a while back. You can’t go wrong with the shop’s assortment of bundtlets (mini-bundt cakes) in a variety of flavors including red velvet, chocolate, lemon and white chocolate raspberry. The place was packed when I went, but the employees are speedy and friendly.

Check out this behind-the-scenes video we did at the bakery.

The store closes at 6 p.m.

I was in New York City last weekend. More accurately, I ate my way around the city. And I noticed some interesting things. All the restaurants, for example, have grades in the window (A,B,C). Turns out that, effective last summer, New York City began requiring restaurants to post letter grades that correspond to scores it receives from its sanitary inspection. Grade cards must be posted where they can easily be seen by people passing by. NYC has 24,000 restaurants, so I would imagine this new requirement serves to greatly motivate restaurateurs to maintain high standards—you can pass on a “C” restaurant and find an “A” next door.

Here in Big D, restaurant inspection scores are readily available to the public, but, honestly, how often are we going to check the score before we try a place out? I do now, but hadn’t until recently when we shared our findings here on Back Talk. It would be a lot easier if the scores were right there in the window, no? I did notice that even the one C-grade spot I saw in NYC wasn’t short on customers, but since the law is so new, I’m not sure customers know to look for the grade yet. Or, maybe they are loyal to their favorite places regardless of the scores.

Another note, all the deli’s and chains had calorie counts listed for menu items. Alas, this is also required by the NYC Health Department. Plus, when I was researching it, I remembered this NY Times story from back in March noting that all major chain restaurants nationwide will soon be required to do this. So, just like I couldn’t order that salmon dill bagel sandwich on Wall St. without knowing that it contained more than 500 calories, I will soon have to see that a caramel Frappucino is 380 calories. Will this affect the way people order? I know it will for me, because I am calorie conscious, though I won’t go looking for the calorie count if it’s not easy to find. So bummer for me. Another truth I don’t want to hear. But I think most will stick to what they like even if it stands to make us pudgier. New York has reported “mixed results at best” with the initiative.

I can hear the complaining now: “Not another rose, Jeff. Aren’t you tired of them yet?”

Not at all. I’ve never understood the reluctance for rose among so many wine drinkers (and sparkling wine too, for that matter). It’s cheap and it’s food friendly. And, best of all, it’s cheap. Some of the hesitation, certainly, comes from the wine drinker’s reluctance to be caught drinking pink wine, since they are terrified this will bring stares and giggles from the wine snobs. Fortunately, I don’t care about stuff like that. And, with Thanksgiving a couple of weeks away, roses like the Maremma are the kinds of wine that more people should consider.

So what about the Maremma ($11, purchased, available at Jimmy’s)? It’s Italian, a blend of sangivoese and cabernet sauvignon from Tuscany. Look for  pleasant tart cherry and cranberry fruit, but nothing too extreme, and a bit of a mineral finish. In this, it’s a very old fashioned kind of rose — dry and unassuming. I tasted it, put the glass down, and wasn’t sure if I liked it. But the next thing I knew, the bottle was mostly empty and I was thinking about how pleasant it had been. Drink this chilled, and pair it with food. Hamburgers would be good, and, as noted, so would Thanksgiving.

There might be hope for those craving another good deli in the neighborhood. Gio’s Cafe & Deli is set to open in the former Roaster’s Deli space at Preston and LBJ by Dec. 1.

It may not be a purebred New York deli, but it may have potential. The Chicago-based restaurant specializes in Italian fare, including hot and cold paninis as well as traditional pizzas and pasta dishes.

If you’ve been wondering whatever happened to the Metro Grill restaurant at Henderson and Central Expressway, wonder no more: Steve Thompson with the DMN has an interesting story that details how two brothers (one of whom lived in the M Streets until his home was foreclosed, the story says) wound up in bankruptcy for that deal while being set up with a $500,000 city subsidy for a restaurant in South Dallas that opened last month.

Even as they were defaulting on a loan to their lender on the Metro Grill and then “trashing” (a judge’s term, not mine) the restaurant’s interior by hauling off everything from kitchen equipment to urinals, Mark and Dirk Kelcher were working out a deal with the city to operate Delta Charlie’s Bar and Grill at the Dallas Executive Airport (formerly Red Bird Airport), the DMN story reports.

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Attention foodies: are you a fan of the Food Network? If so, then Williams-Sonoma in NorthPark Center has a treat for you. Monday, Nov. 8 from 12-2 p.m., Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa, will be in the store to sign her latest cookbooks. The event is free and small samples of Ina Garten’s recipes will be provided.

Today’s metaphysical question: How does Ricccardo Cotarella produce a wine of this quality, ship it to the U.S., overcome the high euro, and sell it for about $10? Most California wineries that do cheap wine can’t even come close to this.

In other words, Riccardo Cotarella is still a genius.

I have been drinking Falesco wines for almost 10 years, and I have never been disappointed, whether it’s the red, white or pink. This vintage of the white, the Bianco ($12, purchased, available at Central Market), is made with verdicchio and vermentino. They have produced a wine low in alcohol with tell-tale Italian acid and just enough fruit to appeal to American palates. Think of it as tart with a touch of lime, but fresh and clean and pretty close to fabulous. Highly recommended, and certainly in the $10 Hall of Fame.

Chill this and drink it on its own, with salads, or most any kind of chicken. Fried chicken, in fact, would be quite a nice pairing.