An advance edition due to the upcoming holiday. Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

We cannot find a link to it, so take it with a grain of salt, but we read recently that, for the first time in the US, wine consumption has overtaken that of beer. Chardonnay-drinking is not an insult for (elitist Volvo-driving East coast) liberals anymore, it is the reality of the American population. Move over, PBR, it's Beaujolais nouveau time! As a logical consequences, we have seen a bunch of new wine bars opening up in San Francisco, a development we welcome with open arms: it reminds us of old Europe, and all the traditions associated with sipping wines in the company of friendly people.

One of these traditions is the nibbling of food to prevent the wine from kicking in too fast. And we are pleased to report we found just the perfect spot to drink and graze: Cav Wine Bar, on a corner of Market Street where the consumption of liquor typically happens out of a sidewalk shopping cart. Cav --named after the way the French word for cellar, cave, actually sounds-- has opened two months ago and we lucked into it one evening after the opera. Our bus was going to make the turn onto the Haight Street climb when we noticed a new neighbor to Zuni. Our baby-sitter clock had just started a new hour which we were going to pay anyway, so we got off and went in.

We were glad we did. The menu listed an attractive selection of small plates and an equally interesting choice of large plates, which could be ordered in two sizes: the regular entree size, and the small plate size. Our readers have to excuse us for not actually ordering anything in the full size, but so many were tempting that we chose, on both our visits, to pick many smalls instead of a few bigs.