If you are traveling in the next couple of days, chances are you might not have a stocked refrigerator right about now. And if you are hosting a Christmas party, then your fridge might be so full that you don't have room for much more. Going out can be just the right thing when that mix of cabin fever and cooking fatigue set in.

What's the latest? The papers stayed classic with a couple of picks for steak places and a few "event spots" -- restaurants you would go to for a birthday, an anniversary, or around a holiday time. If you've got guests visiting from out of town, you'll need a list of spots the whole gang might like.

Steak, seafood and cheesecake, for example. What relative of yours isn't going to go for that sort of thing? (unless you have a vegan in the mix)? Tom Sietsema of The Washington Post notices this "surf and turf" place, Bluepoint, that's been open for a few months. He says good things about the steak and is a little bit cryptic in the other things he mentions. We're not sure this is a screaming endorsement, but he doesn't have any loud complaints.

The other East Coast big-wig reviewer, Frank Bruni, also does steak: He reviews Primehouse, down on Manhattan's Park Avenue South. (By the way, notice that Bluepoint isn't Blue Point and Primehouse isn't Prime House? That's still the cool naming convention, apparently.)

Bruni gives it a "good," and what he likes he really likes, and what he doesn't, well, you'll enjoy reading those parts the most. Regarding the meat, which apparently all comes from the gene line of a 2,500-pound cow named Prime, Bruni says: "Serious ambition goes into its steaks, starting but not ending with the restaurant’s vaunted Secretariat of sirloin. Primehouse ages its beef on site, in a climate-controlled underground room tiled with Himalayan rock salt. You can gaze at the dangling flesh, if you like, through an enormous window. Dinner meets diorama." Love it. What we don't love: a martini called a "Dirty Bull" that gets its name form the "dribble of veal stock" used to make it, and an injectable dessert.

And if the relatives don't do steak, then you might want to take them to a sure thing. There are a couple of ideas here today: First, also from Mr. Bruni we have "revisit" review of the "storied" One If By Land, Two If By Sea in New York's West Village. He was there a couple of years ago and was thoroughly unimpressed, so he went back -- and things have really improved. It's always nice to hear stuff like that. Side note: We do not normally care for this kind of pasta, but how good does "gruyère gnocchi, studded with snails" sound on a cold winter night?

Now, Hot Plates knows a relative or two of ours who is big on "civilized." Therefore, a restaurant can't be loud; it can't look industrial or unfinished; the food can't be too ambitious; and it has to have portions for normal eaters, not birdlike grazers. We love that reviewer S. Irene Virbila, who writes an adoring tribute to Suzanne Goin's Lucques in the L.A. Times, has a pet peeve with being "whacked by passing monolithic handbags" while waiting for her table in restaurants. That doesn't happen at Lucques, she says, where the food is Mediterranean-meets-California: simple, direct, flavorful. She is grateful for the lack of backwards-hat-wearing youths and the assortment of polite, food-loving, smartly dressed patrons. Bottom line: It's not current without being trendy. It's a place you can count on, in Virbila's opinion, and that is sadly something rare these days.

If modern elegance isn't the ticket, then maybe go for another type of crowd-pleaser: The Institution. A place like Tam O'Shanter in L.A., open since 1922. It even features carolers to complete its "carefully constructed nostalgia trip." "When you think Christmas in L.A. you think the Tam. It's a tradition," the manager says.

Here in our wooded corner of the world, we're ready for that basket of goodness known as the holidays in December. This next string of days will incorporate the best of all of these places we have mentioned: tradition, simplicity, old-fashioned fun and a dash of romance.