Hot Plates is coming at you this week with a fun assortment of food news, but we have to lead with what bleeds, as the hardened types say. This isn't about a fatality, exactly, but Americans are so up in arms about the possible dangers of mercury that we think this item should lead today's roundup.

City-dwelling sushi lovers can eat their favorite treat pretty much whenever the mood strikes. From high-end places like Nobu to your corner market to Whole Foods, the raw stuff is available everywhere at different price points. So the front-page news in today's New York Times about high mercury levels in tuna sushi has probably scared the life out of a lot of urbanites. Once every three weeks is OK, the article says, but more could be dangerous: "Recent laboratory tests found so much mercury in tuna sushi from 20 Manhattan stores and restaurants that at most of them, a regular diet of six pieces a week would exceed the levels considered acceptable by the Environmental Protection Agency."

What the Times did is a great piece of service journalism. Since "No government agency regularly tests seafood for mercury," the editors decided to take the fish to the lab themselves and get some answers. The levels in some of the sushi examined was "above one part per million, the 'action level' atwhich the F.D.A. can take food off the market."

By the way: If you weigh less than 154 pounds, you should consume even less than the level that's deemed OK for a person of "average" weight.

The takeaway from this? If you currently always order the "tuna lovers" special on the sushi menu -- and if you eat it weekly or more often -- maybe branch out and try the spicy salmon roll or the soft-shell crab next time. Otherwise, as you were.

On Thursday, the day after the sushi warnings piece came out, the Times did a man-on-the-street to follow up on whether consumers were frightened off. The results were pretty much what you could guess, and a couple of the people quoted are, in typical snarky New York style, pretty amusing.

In warmer, happier news, we aim to counteract the cold, scary fish news with this fondue piece, also from the N.Y. Times. This may feel like just the thing to do this coming weekend: hot cheese, bread, wine. The port wine and sharp cheddar combination sounds particularly right to us as we face the oncoming evening with only a cold, raw chicken peering out from the refrigerator when we open it up.

It is most hilarious that the writer receives hand-me-down fondue forks but the pot was used to "plant an amaryllis" (which meets a cold, stiff fate by article's end). Perhaps this is meant to poke gentle fun at the whole fondue "thing." Before she actually makes a few fondues, the writer wonders whether she must first slip into bell bottoms, or if fondue only belongs at an "I Love the '70s" party. It was only last week that Hot Plates wondered whether our fondue set was up in the attic or shoved back into the pantry somewhere, and we'd meant to go looking but we'd forgotten -- until now.

The L.A. Times threw in this recipe for goat cheese ice cream that might be a fun thing to try making, if you're the ice cream-making type (one of the new C&K writers does a basil ice cream that is reportedly to die for!).

Another mood-lifter item is Tom Sietsema writing in The Washington Post about Ceiba -- a Latin spot in downtown D.C. that just opened a "seductive lounge" where you can drink and snack and lounge on rattan chairs until you believe you've left the chilly city and gone south. Pretty nice flattery from Mr. Sietsema, who goes on about how this spot has "vacation vibes, no passport required" (as the headline reads).

"There's no getting bored with the itinerary, which nods to Cuba with mojitos and mini Cubano sandwiches on Mondays, Brazil with caipirinhas and grilled sausage with chimichurri on Tuesdays, Peru with pisco sours and seviche on Wednesdays, Spain with sangria and tapas on Thursdays, and Mexico with guacamole and margaritas on Fridays." Throw on your Tommy Bahama and your Lilly Pulitzer and make a toast to getaways.