There are plenty of reasons you might not have a big, home-cooked Thanksgiving meal planned with your loved ones this year.

But if you’re going to dine out, do not become one of those holiday-themed Hollywood movie characters who’s supposed to epitomize “depressing and/or pathetic and/or quirky” by patronizing a 24-hour chain restaurant or Chinese joint.

Go thou instead to Hotel Congress’s Cup Café, which will offer the exact opposite of a depressing/pathetic experience—just because it’s a cool and classy place. And the food—holiday specials served from 9 a.m. to close—will be as good as anything your Great Aunt Mildred would make, whether your holiday meat of choice is traditional turkey (with all the usual fixins’) or coffee-cured Virginia ham.

Vegetarian? Just go for the pie: apple, pumpkin and pecan by the slice.

Reserve a table at The Cup Café, 311 E. Congress St., at hotelcongress.com/food or by calling 798-1618.

Are you an adult who supports youth education (specifically, helping young people get more careers in the STEM fields)? Yet for whom that certainly doesn’t mean you prefer your fundraisers to be lacking in the adult-beverage department?

This Saturday’s inaugural YESNET Block Party has you covered. This event is organized to raise money for the S.Y. STEM Coalition, a Tucson-based nonprofit working to steer kids toward work in science, technology, engineering and/or math—and it’s being held as an outdoor party in Three Wells Distilling and Ten 55 parking lot, with all the distillery’s deliciously alcoholic products available for consumption.

The event’s other sponsors, also offering their wares, are all likewise local: Ten 55 Brewing, Yellow Brick Coffee, Green Feet Brewing and Hamilton Distillers. (Besides promoting a local nonprofit, the event hopes to show off the area where it’s being held as the newly blossoming “craft-beverage district” it is, northeast of PaloVerde Road and Ajo Way.)

Need a little voting practice just before Election Day?

It can’t hurt, right? Well, in our opinion it can’t… as long as the practice activity is fun, meaning having nothing to do with the actual election—no politics allowed.

If you agree, and if you happen to be a fan of pizza—like, um, probably most people?—we have the perfect event for you: the Pizza Throwdown 2016, to be hosted by Fresco Pizzeria and Pastaria this Sunday, courtesy of Tucson Originals Restaurants, an alliance of independently owned local restaurants, food purveyors and others whose goal is to show off Tucson’s first-class culinary community.

Drop by the restaurant at 3 p.m. and enjoy three hours of handmade pizza from establishments across the city; then vote for your favorite. If you’re 21 or older, you can also enjoy samples of hand-crafted beer.

Of course, you don’t have to be any particular age to choose your fave pie. So this is especially good voting practice for 17-and-younger future president-pickers.

The only drawback? Well, you’ll want to be discriminating in your choice of best pizza—so you just might have to eat a lot of it. (Of course, there won’t really be any real-life consequences if you’re not discriminating… but it’s the principle of the thing! And what good will this practice voting be if you don’t take it seriously?)

So come on down to eat, drink and support local cuisine.  Whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, this weekend you can be a member of what many would deem the best party of all: the Pizza Party.

The Pizza Throwdown happens from 3–6 p.m., Sun., Nov. 6, at Fresco Pizzeria and Pastaria, 3011 E. Speedway Blvd. Tickets are $20 at the door or $20 bought in advance.

It's the end of October which, in my house, means diving head first into vats of chile and chocolate—and, of course, paying homage to those we've lost with Día de los Muertos.

To that end, Tohono Chul, 7366 N. Paseo Del Norte, is the place to be this Friday, Oct. 28 and Saturday, Oct. 29. Buy some chile plants and walk through the gardens enjoying Day of the Dead-inspired artwork, chile roasting, food and wine tastings, live entertainment and free Día de los Muertos-themed face painting, plus activities for the kids.  

Tickets are $15 ($5 for members, free for kids under 12), but we're giving away four pairs of tickets, good for either day. 

Want to win? Enter below. We'll get in touch with winners throughout the day.

Yoshimatsu Healthy Japanese Eatery might be the last place you’d expect to be serving Halloween-themed eats—but you’d be wrong!

This locally owned, super-vegan-friendly restaurant is so authentically Japanese that the menu is written in choppy English and it serves some stuff that some Americans would find, well, not so yummy-sounding—like squid salad or fermented soybeans. But this place serves up so much variety that you’re sure to find something you like, be it the low-cal stir-fried tofu noodles or the more decadent bacon-and-onion Kushi Yaki skewers.

Anyway, in honor of All Hallows’ Eve this year, in mid-October Yoshimatsu started offering a Halloween Special: pumpkin ramen—a unique but great idea!—as well as Yuzu Miso Dengaku, or miso-glazed eggplant (whose relation to Halloween we’re frankly not sure about, but which we’ve heard is heard is delicious).

And if you haven’t been to Yoshimatsu for awhile, you might not even know two very important things about the place:

1. Yes, it’s open again—it reopened right across the street from its old location last spring!

And…

2. It’s apparently one of Bernie Sanders’ go-to Tucson eateries: He was spotted there just last week, when he spoke at the university. We’ll get back to you if we get the scoop on what he ordered. (Politicians: They’re just like us!)

You may have plans for Halloween—Mon., Oct. 31—and for the Friday or Saturday before Halloween (or even all three nights!). But what about the night before Halloween, traditionally known as a night for mischief and often called “Devils’ Night”?

Well, Hotel Congress’s hasn’t forgotten about this “holiday.” The folks at Cup Café have some mischief (the good kind) in store for anyone who wants to celebrate gastronomically: The Devil’s Night Dinner, a fancy four-course meal with a Halloween theme, entertainment and even a dress code—wear black!

The three dinner courses are all cleverly planned around the theme of the three wise (and creepy) monkeys. First, sit down to a “See No Evil” course featuring crudo of Spanish mackerel (we do think raw fish looks kinda gross) with a blood-orange-and-ginger glaze; then just try to “hear no evil” during the second course, including dishes with “sizzling mushrooms” and “crispy duck skin.” Of course the “Speak No Evil” course includes tongue. But after that diners are rewarded with the Devil’s Dessert: “pumpkin trifle and pumpkin ice cream with marshmallow sauce and shaved chocolate (plus “squid ink crumble,” whatever that is). And all four courses are paired with fancy Halloween-themed cocktails.

Despite all that talk of evil, we promise the food and drink will be good.

The dinner takes place outside in the dark, on the Hotel Congress Plaza, and the entertainment is dark, too—dark magic, that is, performed by Tucson’s own Magic Kenny Bang Bang.

The Devil’s Night Dinner starts at 7 p.m., Sun., Oct. 30, at the Cup Café, 311 E. Congress St., and costs $65. Get more information and make reservations at hotelcongress.com/devils-night-dinner.

It might be 90 degrees outside, but it is fall and with fall comes a series of delicious and refreshing Oktoberfest-ivals. This weekend, the fest to not miss is 4thtoberfest.

This Saturday, Oct. 22 from 1 to 7 p.m., enjoy bands, brats and so many local beers on 4th Avenue. 

Now, you can get into the bars and see the bands without purchasing a $15 ticket, but it does sound like a good deal (and a portion of sales will be donated to KXCI): A ticket gets you eight tasting tickets redeemable for 1 nickel pour each, a 5 ounce logo glass and a discount on your brat plates (plan to spend $5 on those) plus exclusive access to some specialty beers—but we'll get to those in a second. 

First, lets get you in! Five lucky people are getting a pair of tickets from us. Fill out our entry form here and we'll get in touch with winners today (Thursday, Oct. 20) and tomorrow (Friday, Oct. 21).

Now that we've got all the logistics out of the way, let's go over what you'll be putting in your mouth:

Tap + Bottle is having a ladies’ night!? Nope, wait—it’s more like a “ladies’ late morning.”

Ever heard of “Tucson Girls’ Pint Out”? It’s a local all-female organization that, according to its website, “promotes solidarity between beer drinkers of the fairer sex.” Through monthly events like field trips, drives and meet-ups—quite often, obviously, at bars and pubs—this group aims not only to unite women who already love beer, but to initiate future female brew connoisseurs.

“Boys” are allowed at Girls’ Pint Out events… but only “on chains and when dining al fresco.”

This group’s mission? “To increase women’s knowledge of beer through collaboration with fellow females, and introduce the uninitiated to superior suds.” Actually, GPO wants to “reclaim our supremacy” over the beer lifestyle, pointing out that females were the first brewers in ancient Sumeria. (We didn’t know that!)

So is GPO a bunch of radical feminists or just some cool chicks who love beer? If you don’t know yet, you decide when you come to their three-year anniversary party, where members (and initiates) will be getting together for one of the most ladylike types of gatherings—a brunch—and making it boozy.

This Sunday from 10 a.m. to noon—if you’re a girl, that is—come to Tap + Bottle and get girly over delicious eats from the Chef's Kitchen omelet bar, with beer on tap, naturally: A special-collaboration mole stout by GPO and Ten Fifty-Five Brewing Company will be flowing, as will taps from Historic Brewing Company and New Belgium Brewing.

Bring bras to donate to Sister Jose Women’s Center—because girls are generous like that.

Tap + Bottle is at 403 N. Sixth Ave., St. 135. Visit thetapandbottle.com for details and to check out the calendar.

Yes, pieces of broccoli look like little trees, but that’s not at all what Mission Garden means by “edible trees,” the focus of its Fourth Annual Membrillo Fest/Edible Tree Celebration, coming up this Saturday and cosponsored by the LEAF (Linking Edible Arizona Forests) Network.

No, in this case edible trees are, of course, trees on which edible goodies grow. And the event is being held to encourage you (and your family) to plant them.

The all-ages celebration—held at a farm near A Mountain—will include exhibits, demonstrations, orchard tours, edible-tree sales (take home whatever produces your favorite produce!) and a class in making traditional cajeta de membrillo (quince paste, a Mexican dessert or snack taken at tea time) and quince jam. The class will be taught by Josefina Lizárraga, a Tucson artist, master cook and edible-plant cultivator (she’s got a whole garden full of edible and medicinal flora, including… pineapples). If you take the class, you get the added benefit of tasting as much quince paste and jam as you want (but OK, Lizárraga will probably let you taste it even if you’re not really participating in the class part).

So come on down to the festival, buy some “edible trees” to take home and plant—and once you can eat what they’re producing, you can skip the broccoli a little more often.

The Membrillo Fest takes place Sat., Oct. 22, from 2–5 p.m., at 929 W. Mission Lane. It’s free.

If you were out of town for the sweltering summer, lucky you—except you missed three of four events in a cool “summer culinary adventure” series brought to us by DOWNTOWN Kitchen + Cocktails and Chef Janos Wilder, called “DOWNTOWN’S Around the Globe—Cities of Gastronomy.” These events highlight Tucson’s culinary heritage with cooking classes and “pop-up dinners” at Wilder’s Carriage House restaurant.

Anyway, if you missed the first three, be glad there’s one more event in the series and it just might be the best—featuring a special guest, award-winning Chef Diego Hernandez from Ensenada, Mexico, a “sister” City of Gastronomy. Chef Hernandez will share some of his Baja California signature recipes from his restaurant Corazon de Tierra in Guadalupe, named one of the top restaurants in Latin America.

The event starts at 5:30 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 7 with a cooking class, followed by hors d’oeuvres and a five-course dinner. Participation per person is $80; register at carriagehousetucson.com.