I've been eating at La Hacienda on Nolensville regularly for over five years, typically having lunch twice a week. On each visit, I tend to consume at least two small bowls of salsa by myself. Friends who eat with me know I don't share when it comes to the delicious red suspension.

La Ha's salsa tends to vary with each batch. The levels of herbs or other ingredients may differ, but the flavor is OK at worst and divine at best. While it has been a little pickle-y lately, today, something was terribly off.

One person gave up after one bite. I made it through half a bowl trying to figure out what the wrongness was. The unpleasant taste seemed familiar, but I just couldn't place it. Then it hit me: bug spray. Once I named it, the others at my end of the table stopped eating it as well.

I'm pretty sure that's not what it was; nonetheless, there was a flavor in the sauce that shouldn't have been there. Any other regulars notice it and have a guess?

Let me add, though, that one bad batch among the gallons of their salsa that I've consumed over the years doesn't really bother me. To steal from one of my party, I surely won't be returning...until next week.

I was home sick recently, and while I lay in bed too weak to change the channel, I endured endless hours of daytime TV. I think it was during an enthusiastic exchange between Kathy Lee and Hoda that I learned about these handy little strips for testing the caffeine levels of your coffee.

According to the marketing propaganda, as many as 30 percent of decaf coffee orders in restaurants aren't exactly decaf. I can believe that. After all, it can be hard to remember whether the orange pot is the one with or without the go-juice.

True confessions time: How many of you have tried to pass off caffeinated coffee as decaf to your guests—either at home or in a restaurant?

When I stopped by the coffee counter at Whole Foods in Green HIlls this week, I was delighted to see the store is now offering Drew's Brews, in addition to Whole Foods' Allegro brand. The barista said management is waiting to see how things go before making Drew's Brews a permanent offering. Whole Foods sells Drew's Brews and Allegro for the same price. So if you want beans roasted by Nashvillian Drew Park on the java-scented cliffs of East Nashville, make some noise about it next time you're at Whole Foods.

Perhaps you'll see a film over this pre-holiday weekend, and perhaps you'll pay $4 for sub-optimal popcorn. That in itself doesn't especially irritate me. No, that's the role of the $4 soft drink and $4 candy, for a total of $12 for a snack worth about $3.50 at retail.

If the food were any good, maybe the price wouldn't be an issue. But the candy selection is infantile. The soft drinks are never mixed right and are either syrupy or weak or taste like the stuff that cleans the tubes. I have personally witnessed the unloading of giant bags of pre-popped corn at a local theater. It tasted like it was trucked in from California after a long boat ride from China.

Are you one of those people who skips the whole issue by taking your own treats? If so, Cinematical has a thought for you, which is that movie theaters aren't in the entertainment business; they're in the concessions business, so please buy concessions.

There are definitely two sides to the story. The theater deserves to make a profit. Theatergoers deserve to vote with their wallets, especially at a time like this. I worry a little that some theaters won't make it through the downturn, if it's true that 80 percent of profits come from concessions. That's a lot to ask of stale pretzels.

(After the jump, 8 ways to improve movie theater food.)

Every so often when I sit down to sort through my receipts and expense forms, my mind wanders to the topic of tipping. Something about seeing all those gratuities—scribbled in my handwriting on tiny slips of thermal-transfer paper—makes me want to take the pulse of the dining public to make sure I'm, you know, doing it right.

For example, how much do you tip? Do you tip on the pre- or post-tax total? If you tip on the post-tax bill, do you adjust your gratuity upward when you are in, say, Hawaii, which has a 4 percent state sales tax? Do you tip the same at lunch and dinner? Do you tip differently depending on whether you have a whole meal or just cocktails? Do you tip differently depending on if you sit at the bar or at a table? If you were to order, say, a $100 bottle of wine, would you tip $20? Do you tip if the restaurant has counter service? Do you tip the same if there's counter service but you don't have to bus your own table? Do you tip if you were served by the owner of the place rather than by her employee? When you use a gift certificate, do you still tip on the whole bill? Do you actually adjust the tip depending on your dining experience? If so, do you tell the server? Have you ever caught yourself adding a tip to a purchase simply because there was a tip line on the receipt?

It's enough to make my head spin, so I tend to go with 20 percent in most dining situations, except at counter service, in which case I panic and do everything from tipping 20 percent to throwing loose change in the jar. (Now here's a real question: Do you ever fake that you're throwing money in the jar, you cheap bastard?)

Anyone got any tipping insights, questions or anecdotes that might be helpful?

When my partner and I attended a recent performance of the Nashville Symphony, we decided to try out Arpeggio, the restaurant in the East Lobby of the Schermerhorn.

Everything started off well enough. We were safely at our final destination, and the dining area, if a bit cramped, was as pleasant as the Schermerhorn itself.

When our server eventually showed up, he spent longer than necessary listing the buffet offerings--including appetizers, soups, entrées and desserts--which were plainly printed on our menus. Then he took our wine order.

Some time back when it was warm, before hibernation set in, Pink, Carrington and I stopped in at Hot Diggity Dog on Ewing Avenue for a working lunch.

When you have kids, you don't have to go looking for a hot dog. Hot dogs find you, mostly via little chubby hands proffering half-finished dawgs that subsequently become your lunch.

Lately, at last, I have rediscovered how good it is to have a a high-quality dog with fine toppings.

My ideal dog has chili, cheese, relish, hot mustard and caramelized onions. That's where this mystery starts, and leads me to a couple of questions that I know someone can answer.

1) What is that bewitching brilliant green relish, called "green relish" on the menu, and where can I get it?

2) How is it possible that, born and bred in Middle Tennessee going back generations to when my quarrelsome ancestors were asked to hie themselves out of Carolina over the Appalachians, I've never heard pickled peppers referred to as "sport peppers"?

I guess that's three questions.

With the doors closed at both Bar Twenty3 and City Hall, entrepreneur Austin Ray is moving on to yet another venture, The Melrose Neighborhood Pub. Located in the building that formerly housed The Chute, The Melrose represents a complete departure from the uber-hip style of BarTwenty3. While that establishment earned a national reputation for its ever-evolving-always-chic club scene, Ray's latest project seeks to fill the role of neigborhood pub for a neighborhood currently without one. The Melrose will serve lunch and dinner, with a menu of sandwiches and appetizers and a roster of 50 beers.

The first tenant in the newly renovated building at 2535 Franklin Pike, The Melrose will be open to all ages during the day. At night the restaurant will be restricted to guests 21 and up and will remain non-smoking. Ray describes the casual pub décor as having “lots and lots of crap on the walls,” as well as booth seating, wood detailing, schoolhouse lights, pool tables, a Ms. Pac-Man table, an old-school CD jukebox (Apparently CD's are officially old school.) and a Super Shot arcade basketball game. Ray plans to open The Melrose later this month.

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld's wife Jessica is still hashing it out with author Missy Chase Lapine over the question of sneaking healthy goodies into kids' favorite foods. Lapine says La Seinfeld knicked the idea for her Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food from Lapine's earlier book, The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids' Favorite Meals. Meanwhile, Mrs. Seinfeld says folks have long been squeezing spinach into brownies and committing other such culinary subterfuge, so Lapine should have no claim.

Among the latest healthy sneaks are the folks at Plumgood Food, which recently launched a line of kids' dishes infused with fruits, vegetables and whole grains. It's a brilliant idea, as long as it works. And it did work on my kids—to some extent. Here's how Plumgood Kids scored with a panel of tiny taste-testers at my house:

Chefs love autumn and the return of hearty flavors and slow-cooked foods. At Yellow Porch, Chef Guerry McComas is serving his sweet-tea-cured smoked pork chop with sage-brown butter-balsamic and a side of sweet potato pancakes. Duck confit quesadilla gets a touch of pomegranate molasses and a strewing of caramelized onions.

The potato side dishes have taken a wintry turn, too, and now a mushroom-potato gratin accompanies the flat iron steak which I love so dearly, and the beef filet.

"We do a lot of specials because we have a big clientele of regulars," says McComas. It's the specials in particular that are touched by the glories of the harvest. When Bites called, McComas was busy making white sweet-potato gnocchi for the following night's special (which I'm sorry to report was last week, so they're gone).

And for dessert, the pumpkin cheesecake is in da hizzie.

If you're weary of traditional Thanksgiving fare, it's OK, you can tell Bites. Personally, I like Calvin Trillin's idea of making fettuccine alfredo the national holiday dish.

But maybe you adore the turkey-and-trimmings but aren't confident or sufficiently blessed with time to prep it all. Ideal, then, that the pros at Marché can step into that breach with taste and style.

A grain-fed, free-range Ashley turkey (that you yourself cook) is $4 a pound. Whipped sweet potatoes are $15 a pound. Artisan bread-and-mushroom stuffing is $18 a pound. Roasted root vegetables are $15 a pound.

Maybe you're just in charge of bringing dessert. I say ditch the traditional premade piecrust filled with canned pumpkin and get a spiced apple cake with maple butter cream instead. Dessert cakes and pies are $40 each.

Marché's Thanksgiving entertaining options include a brunch selection, too, and a menu of snacks and starters, for the soup-to-nuts treatment. Call the restaurant at 262-1111 for a copy of the menu, or view a PDF online by clicking on either of the Thanksgiving menus. Ordering deadline is Nov. 22.

Stop whining into your zinfandel. (yn), the short-lived boutique for no-nonsense oenophiles, is being resurrected—sort of—inside The Wine Shoppe at Green Hills.

“We are magically transforming The Wine Shoppe in to (yn), in a sense,” said Ed Fryer, who defected from TWS last year to launch (yn) in the Hill Center a few blocks away. When a neighboring merchant recently made Fryer a lease-buyout offer he couldn’t refuse, he closed down (yn), disposed of the inventory of sub-$20 wines and returned to The Wine Shoppe and his first retail love—selling high-end wines in the price range of $40 and above.

But the success of (yn), which carried 365 wines priced under $20, convinced Fryer that customers liked his straightforward approach to wine, without the intimidation and paralysis that come with an exhaustive selection. Now he's planning to edit TWS's inventory of high-end wines to a tight roster of favorites. When the transformation is complete, The Wine Shoppe will stock a range of sub-$20 wines, à la (yn)—along with a similarly succinct list of higher-priced bottles.

“Less is best,” Fryer says. “There is an awful lot of average, boring, bland wine, and it gets even worse when you get into the high-end category.” The fortified Wine Shoppe (not to be confused with The Fortified Wine Shoppe) will seek to cut out the average, boring and bland inventory that so many stores carry for the sake of trying to look comprehensive, Fryer explains.

If all goes well, Fryer has his eye on a retail space in New York City, where he hopes to test out his concept in a state whose laws would allow him to expand into wine-related accessories, tastings, clothing, furniture and glassware. But don’t expect Fryer to be leaving Nashville. He says he’s likely to stay here for the long haul. Meanwhile, stop by The Wine Shoppe and say hi to Fryer, and The Wine Shoppe boys—Josh Fowler with the beret, Jesse Dunn, Rick Bidelman—as well as relocated (yn) guys Harlan Dalzell, Tristan Kinsley and Omari Booker. If you're lucky, the editing process will result in a more than a few good bargains.

The Wine Shoppe is located at 2109 Abbott Martin Road.

Everyone pretty well agrees that when it comes to wine, Tennessee has a messed-up system of regulations and a punitive level of taxes.

In other states and countries, which I will stereotype as “more sophisticated,” you can actually purchase drinkable inexpensive wines in the grocery store. (That goes double for Europe, where some suspect Hungary and Romania were admitted to the EU solely on the strength of their plonk.)

If Bites were to ask for a show of hands of everyone unhappy with the absence of Two Buck Chuck from Trader Joe’s, I suspect the view would be armpits as far as the eye could see. It's a shame we can't get Chuck here.

And yet. Bites knows something. I hesitate to share. It’s like telling someone, “Santa is really your Aunt Brenda and Uncle Eddie.”

Two Buck Chuck…is Napa Ridge. The “Charles Shaw” vineyard did exist at one time, when a wealthy investment banker moved to the valley to start a winery. He sold in the 1980s to Bronco Wine Company. Which is owned by Fred Franzia, a nephew of Ernest and Julio Gallo.

The brand list controlled by Franzia/Bronco includes Forest Glen, Rutherford Vintners, Grand Cru, Montpellier, Silver Ridge and Hacienda and a couple dozen others. The Charles Shaw name was revived in 2001. In 2007 the Charles Shaw chardonnay defeated hundreds of other competitors for a prestigious wine award and the myth of Two Buck Chuck was sealed.

The strategy for keeping the cost down on Chuck involves purchasing California's excess grape harvest for a fraction of the going price.

Now that Chuck is no longer anonymous, let's examine his price tag. On the East Coast, Two Buck Chuck is nearer $4. And when Tennessee adds its own tax, the price may inch toward $5.

And $5 per bottle will buy you…Crane Lake, another Bronco brand that's available locally.

So anyone up for a wine tasting of Bronco brands to find one we can live with until the people of Tennessee rise up and insist on simplified liquor regulations?

It was about a decade ago that Fluffernutter introduced me to Chef’s Market Café & Take Away in Goodlettsville. Since that first fateful trip, I have been amazed by the number of times I have asked the question, “Who catered this—it’s terrific?” and been met with the response, “Chef’s Market.”

Last week when I returned for the first time to Chef’s Market, I was delighted to find the same unexpected coziness that I remembered from all that time ago. Located in an unassuming strip mall at 900 Conference Drive, the market has an easy rustic patina, with rough concrete floors, farmhouse furniture, large chalkboard menus and an old gas stove repurposed as shelving for gourmet groceries—including bags of the tri-colored pita points that are a hallmark of a Chef’s Market catered spread.

The buffet line overflowed with modern twists on meat-and-three cuisine, including baked chicken with plums, capers and olives; seared salmon and crawfish sauce; and pork loin with cranberries. The roster of Thanksgiving-worthy sides included garlic mashed potatoes, green beans with almonds, and a decadent sweet potato casserole so shamelessly encrusted with nuts and sugar that, frankly, it could be called Sweet Potato Brown Betty. Meat with two sides and a muffin cost about $10, depending on the meat.

The sprawling menu and display cases included plenty of salads and sandwiches that would have made for lighter fare on a prettier day. As it was, it was cold and rainy, and I needed lots of sweet potato casserole. I kept the salads for another day—but I hope another decade won't pass before I go back.

The truffle market has collapsed, Starbucks' profits are down 97 percent and there's been a surge in lunch box sales, all apparent consequences of the collapse of the slow markets.

A white truffle weighing nearly two pounds auctioned off this week brought in about $30,000, 84 percent less than at a similar auction last year, reports Bloomberg.com.

Starbucks, the ubiquitous coffee chain, told Wall Street that fourth-quarter profits would be way down due to slower sales and substantial charges for closing stores. The chain earned about a penny a share.

And lunchbox sales are up by double digits as families look for corners to cut.

If the Richter scale measures earthquakes, what can we call the scale that measures economic cutbacks/hardships? And what's the next milestone you expect it to hit?