Having Thanksgiving dinner in a restaurant? Share your menu!

Cafe Society
1

After wrestling with home-made Thanksgiving dinners for years, some time ago we Mercotans decided to take the softer, easier way.

We dine out on Turkey day.

It’s just our nuclear family and a few special guests, and we’ve come to enjoy it immensely.

Granted, it is a bit upscale: An incredibly diverse buffet put on by a 5 Diamond-rated resort.

Anyway, here’s the fare for this year: Mercoturkey Dinner (BEWARE PDF)

I am looking forward to the scallops. Also the grilled pear with gorgonzola salad. The Penne pasta with duck confit sounds nice too.

The warm gingerbread with applesauce and vanilla whipped cream sounds appealing too.

Oh yeah, there’s turkey and wadding, too!

So share your restaurant menu!

2

They would have to physically shove me away from that “Chef Manned Wisconsin Artisan Cheese Station.”

3

Not a resturant, but a grocery store:

10 to 12 pound oven roasted Turkey.
Mashed potatoes and Gravy.
Dressing.
One dozen dinner rolls.
Cranberry Sauce.
Apple pie.

$39.99 at Safeway. Not exactly a gourmet meal, but I’d be hard pressed to take myself and my son out for only 40 bucks anywhere else.

4

Oh, that’s a fun station! I spend 3 or 4 minutes there every year chatting with the cheesemeister about what his latest offerings are. Sometimes they have 10 year old cheddar! And stravecchio parmesan, and Merissa, and an lovely Amana style blue.

5

But do they have vegemite?

This Thanksgiving I’ll probably have PB&J, or maybe go big and do a Stouffer’s lasagne. We had a pre-Thanksgiving dinner a couple weeks ago, and I’m feeling low-key.

StG

6

$44 is a great price for the offerings on the menu. Enjoy!

7

Qadgop, will you adopt me? That looks woooonnnderfulll…

8

We’re going out to dinner for the first time this year. We’re going to a local, Southern cafe, known for its fresh food and live jazz. They do a traditional Thanksgiving menu: turkey, sage stuffing, buttermilk mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry orange relish, green beans, pecan pie, pumpkin pie. They’re also going to have their regular menu available, which is sort of a random mix of fish, vegetarian dishes, pastas, etc. The chef is known for going to the farmer’s market every morning and deciding on the menu based on what’s available, so it changes daily. I’ve never eaten there, but everyone I’ve mentioned it to goes nuts about how great the food is, so I’m really looking forward to it.

When the idea of going out was first broached, I didn’t think it was a great idea. Now that the reservations are made, though, I’m much more enthusiastic. No planning, no shopping, no cooking, no clean-up, no pesky leftovers. What’s not to like about that?

Qadgop, that menu looks divine. But, geez, the kids get shafted, don’t they? Ants on a log? Jello? Tater tots? If you’re going to have any little ones with you, send them over to the cheese station and introduce them to the real food!

9

Those are just the kiddie specialties out on the buffet. The kids have full access to the rest of the stuff too. Train your kid up on pan-seared scallops, decent pastas, gravlax, pumpkin cupcakes, and rugalach. If they whine too much, give 'em tater tots!

10

We’ve gone to this restaurant for Christmas for a couple of years, but I’ve never gone for Thanksgiving.

Now I’m hungry.

11

We’ve gone to this restaurant for Christmas for a couple of years, but I’ve never gone for Thanksgiving.

Now I’m hungry.

12

Not a restaurant, but a Honey Baked Ham store. We got a smoked turkey breast, cornbread dressing, and the BEST sweet potato souffle’ in the world.
I’ll make a couple of other sides and something for the husband and kid to have for dessert.

13

Last year we went to the Four Season in Palo Alto, CA, and had a lovely dinner.

Here is this year’s menu-

Yummy.

14

It look absolutely marvelous!!!

But what’s with all this Or stuff? :dubious:

I love a good buffet! :smiley:

15

I’ll just be over at the Dessert Buffet…

16

There are a lot of things that I hate about the major chain grocery stores these days, but I will say that they do a pretty nice job at the Thanksgiving Dinner for a hell of a good price. I still prefer to make it myself just because it feels like tradition, but when time is a pressure those are worth every penny.

17

Actually, there were some mix-ups with seating last year, and we ended up with multiples of every course as their apology! :smiley:

They also do a buffet, but it’s not quite as nice.

18

This year we’re headed to the North Georgia mountains to take in late fall foilage, hike a bit around the Appalachian Trail origin and have Thanksgiving dinner here. Qadgop’s looks better!

19

Ooh, you get an oyster buffet, though! I’d love to knock back a raw oyster or 12 on Thanksgiving.

20

We’ve spent the last three (or is it four) Thanksgivings at Disneyland. It saves on trying to figure out which family to spend the day with; we choose to go away and spend it “alone”. A couple times we had the Thanksgiving Buffet Dinner at the Disneyland Hotel, which is fabulous and huge, and a couple times we ate at one of the restaurants in Downtown Disney. I had turducken a couple years ago; didn’t really see what all the full was about…

This year economics made Disneyland out of the question, and we still haven’t made our final plans. We may spend the day in San Francisco wandering through Chinatown (Peking Turkey, perhaps?), or if weather permits we might do some hiking up near Lake Tahoe and probably hit one of the casinos for a Thanksgiving buffet. Or we might stay home and watch holiday movies and eat popcorn all day.

Popcorn…that’s a traditional Thanksgiving food, isn’t it?