Get That Cilantro Offa My Turkey Cafe du Nord (2170 Market St, 415-979-6545), musically, offers everything from swing dance to spoken word to rockabilly, but culturally, definitely a funky dressy cocktail scene. Bruno's (2389 Mission, 415-550-7455), Deep-set circular red booths, women in 40s suits with slicked back hair and cigarette-holders, cosmopolitans, and miracle of miracles, absolutely delicious food The Tonga Room (Fairmont Hotel, California and Mason, 415-772-5278), A Polynesian-themed Bar-Mitzvah. Check out the lagoon, the bamboo-backed booths, the fake rigging, the simulated thundershow ers that spew "rain" down the sides of the room. The band on the barge sings almost on-key renditions of Tony Bennett and Don Ho numbers. Free food at happy hour; tourists all the time. Big stupid drinks. How high is your kitsch tolerance? Julie Ring's Heart and Soul (1695 Polk St 415-673-7100), Her earlier venture, Julie's Supper Club, had a 50s feeling; this one is more 40s. Dark, glam, a spot where Desi Arnaz would have played before he married Lucy and lost his edge. Starlight Room (Sir Francis Drake Hotel, 450 Powell St, 415-395-8595), Beautiful views of the city, a low-key glamorous feeling, a tasty nibbling menu, no one under 35 in the joint. The Washington Square Bar and Grill (1707 Powell, 415-982-8123), Good house jazz quartet, gifted bartenders, decent food, lots of SF powerguys. A favorite of local columnist/treasure Herb Caen.

I swear, I'm fine with the whole "roots" movement in American cooking. You want to start using words like "reclaim" and "traditional culinary values," you go ahead. Celebrate quinoa. Whip up an Indian pudding. Revel in the wonders of custard with nutmeg.

But then there's that other kind of traditionalism: The arch embrace of vile 50s cooking. It must be stopped. Groovy menus boast gelatin salad doused in lemon-lime soda; half a head of iceberg lettuce topped with a kooky cup of Chernobyl-orange Thousand Island dressing, Elvis-esque deep-fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches. I realize I'm heading into dangerous food-snob waters here; I do not mean to diss anyone who actually grew up on these foods and associates them with home and hearth. No, here I mock those who grew up on Montrachet and think it's just hilarious to glorify Velveeta.

On the last day of the 1996 presidential campaign, Bob Dole went home to Russell to vote, and his 75-year-old sister Gloria was ready. She'd made baked ham with Coca-Cola, beef-salad sandwiches, black-cherry Jell-O salad with cream cheese and nuts. Do I scorn this? No. That's Bob Dole's history. That's sisterly love. But when trendy baby boomers and Generation-Xers start rhapsodizing about Spam, someone needs a good slap upside the entirely-too-ironic head.

There seems to be a Great Divide here. What's "traditional" to this very young country, anyway? The processed-food tradition of Bob's Big Boy and comestibles in aerosol cans, which most of us grew up thinking were pretty nifty? Or the upper-crusty fantasy our fundamentally suburban country has about getting back to the land, a faux-nostalgia expressed in yearnings for organic ingredients and romanticizing all things Native American? The latter route, for foodies, can be a refreshing way to shake off culinary excesses and pretenses. An oversized peanut-butter cookie is a welcome relief from one too many espresso granites in a rosemary-dusted persimmon-gooseberry creme anglaise puddle; a rich, satisfying bowl of mac and cheese is infinitely more enticing than a tangle of sage-scented octopus wrapped in prosciutto served with a tangerine beurre blanc.

Thanksgiving is a natural time to think what "traditional" cooking really means. Most families really do have familiar comfort foods then; the raw ingredients of the meal are generally of-the-land, not processed. A thoroughly 90s Thanksgiving table might be lade with butternut squash soup sprinkled with chopped apples, baked sweet potatoes with caramelized pecans, moist but crispy-skinned turkey, creamy pumpkin pie. And, if a couple of grandma's Jell-O molds grace the scene, well, that's history too. If your genealogy involves mini-marshmallows atop the sweet potatoes, ain't no shame in that.

Really, there's no other holiday that simultaneously taps into our nostalgia for a better past and our desire to build bridges to the 21st century (to invoke rhetoric from both our presidential nominees). It's not a cynical day. Thanksgiving is about American families, eating, spending time together. There's no candy-hoarding, no gift-acquisition, as in the holidays that bracket it. Marketers do not encourage us to buy expensive decorations; most of us just go with the turkey illustration made by our six-year-old outlining her hand. Tradition here, while not always of the harvest, is of the family.

But, if you put cilantro and mango chutney on my turkey, I'll smack you.