Right about now, people are getting in a groove with cooking, and getting ready to entertain -- which makes it a great time of year to take a break and rediscover the pleasure of letting someone else do the cooking (and cleaning) for you. There are some good new places to try, either in their dining room or for a cozy take-away night.

From the Dallas paper we get a nice roundup of great ski-town restaurants. As the writer points out, some really excellent chefs hightail it from glam city life to the cooler -- literally and probably otherwise -- Rocky Mountain resort towns.

Maybe we are just New York-centric sometimes, and we'll cop to that, but we love the idea of blowing into the Black Mountain Wine House in a "sleepy" nook of Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. We would warm up with one of the 30 wines available by the glass and maybe the crostini plate, which features "crispy baguette slices covered in hefty white beans, but the star is a crock of warm ricotta, crushed almonds and olive oil."

That same link will take you to a mini-review of Tailor, a new bar that's just opened in downtown NYC. Between the big-deal "mixologist" and the risk-taking chef, the place sounds perfect for overstimulated-by-choice New Yorkers: "Freeman’s drinks and Mason’s meals are so complicated that consuming them at the same time can be a little like listening to Urdu lessons on headphones while teaching yourself to play the mandolin." Awesome.

Hot Plates would also like to head to Pamplona, reviewed in The New York Times by Frank Bruni, for a plate of their chickpea fries and a bowl of the shrimp gazpacho. Plus, most of the wines are $50 and under, and with Spain you can get a lot of deliciousness for those prices.

Bruni also writes a somewhat curious sound-off column about what he dubs "restaurantspeak," a language that "makes sense but not really, removed from normal conversation by just enough degrees to seem like caricature and to invite snide responses, or at least snarky thoughts." He is really quite disgruntled; it will resonate with some readers, and others will just think Bruni has had a string of really bad days. What annoys him: Overuse of the royal "we," and various forms of the word "enjoy."

A couple of other New York places are opening: The East Village's Mermaid Inn will open an Upper West Side spot; noodle bar Momofuku will expand and reopen with a better space at 11th and 1st Ave.; and the Dirty Bird To Go people will introduce Mila, a Mississippi/Louisiana place.

At this point in the column, you have heard plenty about snacky items. So where's the beef, friends? In Claremont, Calif., at Three Forks Chop House, which the L.A. Times reviews. Besides steak and burgers, it features "meats sourced from farms that raise animals in a sustainable way and beautiful produce from local growers" in addition to cured meats, sausages and cheeses.

There's a substantial article in The Washington Post on the joys of pupusas -- what they are and where to eat them around the Washington area. Since there are half a million Salvadorans in the D.C. area (more than any other immigrant group), one can find the truly authentic article in the capital city. Pupusas are eaten with the fingers, purchased usually for a dollar or two, and filled with some combination of meat, cheese, beans or all three. The article offers five places -- all in Maryland or Virginia -- where great ones can be eaten.

And Tom Sietsema's First Bite column features Hudson Restaurant and Lounge, which just opened in the hot new 'hood of West End in D.C. The owner closed Felix in Adams Morgan, escaping from the chaos of that party-centric part of town, and started this venture, which Sietsema says is beautiful but in need of a food tune-up.

Last of all, but the one that gets the most resounding "yes" of all the places reviewed this week, is a little carryout spot called Aioli Meditalian. It opened where the Fractured Prune donut shop used to be on P Street in downtown Washington, and it really sounds delicious.

The short-rib ravioli is "addictively good," the honey-roasted plum tomatoes have many uses in a short-order cook's kitchen, and the grilled eggplant is "chewy in a good way and loaded with sliced garlic." Really, it's little spots like this one that make it easier to face your (cold, dark) kitchen at the end of a cold and dark day.