Maybe you don’t want to pull out grandma’s tarnished silver turkey tray and gravy boat this year.
Maybe you don’t want to hold a big frozen turkey under a sink faucet for an hour because you forgot to thaw the bird.
Maybe you really just want a “happy” Thanksgiving this time.
So, here are a few places that can redress Turkey Day stress.
Tops Bar-B-Q & Burgers
Just in time for the holidays, Tops is offering its Pit-Smoked Turkey Club as well as whole turkey breasts.
The sandwich comes with pit-smoked turkey breast slices, “barbecue mayonnaise,” applewood bacon, American cheese, lettuce, and tomato.
That barbecue mayonnaise — Tops’ original sweet barbecue sauce blended together with some spices — is a special component, says Tops CEO Randy Hough.
“Guests have been asking us for years — around the holidays, especially — ‘What do you have in terms of a turkey for the holidays?’” says Tops exec Hunter Brown.
They ask, “Are you going to have anything like a seasonal ham or turkey this year?” Hough adds.
This year, the restaurant chain has obliged. The five-pound breasts, which serve up to 10 or 12 people, are “100 percent usable,” Brown says. “You don’t have to carve around any bones.”
Tops will be closed on Thanksgiving, but customers can preorder the turkeys or just pick them up at a Tops location. “It’s already ready. We’re serving it as a sandwich and are able to get them one.”
And, Brown says, “Where else can you roll through a drive-through on your way home and say, ‘I want to get one of those pit-smoked turkeys,’ and several minutes later have it in your car on your way home as if you’re getting a cheeseburger combo? And we will hand it to you out the window.”
“We’ve got you covered until 9 at night,” Hough adds. “I could have used this a couple of times in my lifetime.”
Another Tops Thanksgiving option? Their turkey burger, which they offer all year round. “What’s cool about turkey burgers is turkey burger eaters love it, but cheeseburger eaters also love it,” Brown says.
Chez Philippe
This might not be the year you want to whip up truffle-stuffed squab and Chateaubriand for your Thanksgiving feast. So, let Keith Clinton make it for you from 5:30 to 10 p.m. Thanksgiving night at Chez Philippe at The Peabody.
Clinton, the restaurant’s chef de cuisine, and Konrad Spitzbart, the hotel’s executive pastry chef, created an elegant four-course prix fixe Thanksgiving dinner.
“At Chez, we are detail-oriented,” Clinton says. “We want to emulate the nostalgia and memory of a family meal by way of taste and service. We have familiar staples of holiday tradition. We just tweak the approach and keep it interesting.
“I’m going to use cranberries, turkey, and sweet potato. But I’m also going to use truffle, squab, and edible gold.”
Clinton also is also paying tribute to his own Thanksgivings past. “My grandmother has a patch of persimmon trees on her land. I’m going to use them in our opening canapé sequence as kind of a memory of those family gatherings of my own.”
That will be his persimmon and merengue, which he is featuring with pear and port gelée.
There will be sweet potatoes: Clinton’s “sweet potato and chèvre with sauce poivrade,” which he will serve with Heritage Farms turkey. “I have a distinct memory of watching the marshmallow bubble on top of the sweet potato casserole when I was a kid. I’m leaning on that memory to cook a course for our guests this holiday season.”
Spitzbart is offering pumpkin bavarois along with chocolate brûlée with brown butter and micro sponge crisp honeycomb for the dessert course.
Neil’s Music Room
If you want a more laid-back Thanksgiving dinner, but still desire traditional turkey and all the trimmings, head over to Neil’s Music Room at 5725 Quince Road. Owner Neil Heins is continuing his more than 30-year tradition of offering Thanksgiving dinner on Thanksgiving day.
Heins began doing the dinners when his club was on Madison Avenue. “I started doing them ’cause I was broke,” he says. “Everything was closed on Thanksgiving. I said, ‘Shit. I’ll open up.’”
His menu includes smoked turkey, homemade dressing, “real mashed potatoes,” cranberry sauce, green beans, corn, English peas, and rolls. “And then we give them a dessert. And most of the time it’s pumpkin pie.”
Dinner is served until they run out. “We start at 11 in the morning. And we normally close at 1 in the morning. It usually dies down at about 4 or 5. We’ll serve all day as long as we have it.”
John Williams and the A440 Band will perform.
Neil’s also is selling its Thanksgiving meal to-go.
Dale’s
Dale’s is continuing its 20-year-tradition of serving dinner on Thanksgiving. It’s featured from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the restaurant at 1226 Main Street in Southaven, Mississippi.
Customers get a choice of chicken and dressing or baked ham along with three vegetables, homemade rolls, and cornbread. “And it comes with a piece of sweet potato pie,” says owner Larita Mathis.
They normally serve the same items on their regular Thursday and Sunday menus. “So, we thought, ‘Why don’t we open on Thanksgiving?’” Mathis says.
Customers include “regulars that come every year and new people that just heard about it — or that we do everything from scratch.”
Dale’s also offers to-go orders to feed approximately 10 or 20 people. “All our vegetables and pies are available. So, that’s a big part of our business. People can place orders a few days before Thanksgiving.”
The dressing is made from her grandmother’s recipe, Mathis says. They boil the chickens to make the broth. And they make the cornbread that goes in it.
“We don’t use turkey because the turkey broth has a wilder flavor. If you try to make dressing with that, your dressing has a totally different taste. We tried that one year and it’s just not the same.”
Mathis and her family may grab something to eat that day. But, she says, “By the time we feed everybody, we just want to eat a hot dog or something. We don’t want to look at chicken and dressing.”
