OUT

CHUBBY’S $ When looking for a restaurant to have breakfast, lunch or dinner, we all want a place that serves up variety, hearty helpings and even bigger portions of friendliness. The Touris family has developed a recipe that delivers all of the above at a good price. With four locations in the Metroplex, Chubby’s Family Restaurant provides a rustic setting with down home cooking. Catering available.

Locations: 11331 E. NW Hwy. 214-348-6065 and 7474 S. Cockrell Hill Rd. 972-298-1270.

ALTANO 2007 ($10) PORTUGAL>

July around here is known for two things — the course, and heat. The average high temperature 95, and the record high for every day is 105 or month’s 31 days.

So why do so many wine drinkers insist on drinking red wines for holiday picnics and backyard barbecues July? Your guess is as good as mine. Those wines, their high alcohols and rough tannins, sound pleasant as sitting on the roof during a July afternoon.

The explanation that I usually get from red drinkers who insist on red wine even though it makes the sweat bead on their foreheads is that they like white wine. You can’t argue with that, and know because I have tried and failed. Instead, I learned to recommend red wines that offer the wine qualities they like, such as dark fruit without trace of sweetness, without the qualities that make big red wines so unpleasant in hot weather.

Generally, these wines aren’t always from the known parts of California (or California at all). yet, because they aren’t always from the best-known parts of California, they are often inexpensive almost always offer good value. These three are just start and are all available at Central Market:

This red blend from the Rhone region of France, mostly grenache, is and well-balanced (think red fruits) with some black pepper. Given how cute the name and label are garden fence, while jardin means garden in French), it’s surprisingly good. Put this in the refrigerator 20 or 30 minutes to cool it down, and drink it any kind of grilled beef.

Riccardo

Cotarella, who oversees this line of Italian wines, genius. The Falescos are always cheap, always made, and always deliver value. The sangiovese cherry fruit, acid and even some minerality, and head and shoulders above similarly priced Chianti. Drink this with smoked chicken or most roasted vegetables.

This red blend from Portugal is one of the great secrets of the cheap wine business. It has lots of raisiny fruit — think of it as much lighter version of an Australian shiraz. It’s suitable for porch sipping and hamburgers.

—JEFF SIEGEL

JEFF SIEGEL’SWEEKLYWINE REVIEWS

appear every Wednesday on the Advocate Back Talk blog, prestonhollow.advocatemag.com/blog.

WITH YOUR WINE Chicken breast in lemon juice and olive oil

What better to grill than chicken breasts marinated in the ingredients in which chicken breasts were made to be marinated? Plus, it involves pounding the breasts (use a rolling pin), and that is always therapeutic. The Côté Jardin, despite being red, would pair nicely with this.

Serves four, takes about 20 minutes (Courtesy of Barb Freda)

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

Olive oil

Juice from one lemon

2 cloves crushed garlic

A couple of stems of fresh rosemary

Salt and pepper to taste

1. Pound the breasts until very thin. Place in a Zip-loc bag.

2. Add olive oil, lemon juice, the crushed garlic, fresh rosemary, salt and pepper. Marinate in the refrigerator until dinnertime. Remove and grill until the chicken is done.

ask the WINE GUY?

WHY DO WE CALL THE WINE SANGIOVESE, AND THEITALIANS CALL IT CHIANTI?

In Europe, wine is labeled by the region it’s from, so sangiovese made in Chianti (which is in Tuscany) is called Chianti, just as red wine made in Burgundy is called red Burgundy. In the United States we label wines by grape, so it’s sangiovese and pinot noir.

—JEFF SIEGEL

ASK THE WINE GUY taste@advocatemag.com

STORY BY EMILY TOMAN

PHOTOS BY CAN TÜRKYILMAZ AND CAITY COLVARD

Advocate readers were asked to send in photos of their pets. We received droves of darling doggie pics — pointyeared Dobies, droopy-eyed hounds, mussed-up mutts and dogs wearing clothes (which never gets old). The following is but a sampling of the sundry submissions that drew from our editors the most emphatic, “aww”s.

Name: Ruby

Breed: bulldog

Size: 45 pounds a ge: 7 m om: Janice Wolff

Janice Wolff turns a lot of heads in her neighborhood — at least when she’s strutting down Chevy Chase Avenue with Ruby. “Nobody even knows who I am; I’m just Ruby’s mom.” Children come running when they see the playful, stout bulldog, and adults have even asked to take pictures of her. “I’ve thought about renting her out for parties,” Wolff jokes. Ruby was the last pup left from a friend’s litter, and Wolff decided to take her home on a whim. “She was the leftover, but she ended up being the prize.” Ruby has claimed her napping spot on some blankets inside the linen closet. Although bulldogs are thought to be slow and a bit lazy, Ruby is defiantly not. She’s all about toys that honk, especially the ugly, rubber chickens. On walks, she likes to grab stray baseballs from the nearby field. And she always stops to say hello to neighborhood children. “She loves kids. She has to go up to all the strollers and look in,” Wolff says. And the kids love her back. “She just eats it up.”

NAME: Sam

BREED: Bengal

SIZE: 10 pounds

AGE: 10

MOM: Patricia Ivanisevic

Sam is about as close as it gets to a domesticated tiger, and Patricia Ivanisevic’s living room is his jungle. “They’re wild,” Ivanisevic says of Bengals. “That’s why I don’t have drapes.” Bengals lead active lifestyles and are intelligent. Sam is no exception. But this troublemaker also may have saved his owner’s life. In April 2004, during the middle of the night, a fire started in Ivanisevic’s kitchen. Sam awoke Ivanisevic before the smoke alarms even sounded. She had two other cats at the time that just hid underneath the bed. “If he hadn’t alerted me, I couldn’t have gotten out as quickly.” When he’s not being a hero, Sam’s on the move, jumping around the furniture and even opening cabinets. Unlike most cats, he loves the water and likes to lounge inside the shower. And he doesn’t cut corners when it comes to hygiene. He has two water bowls — one to drink from and another to rinse his paws after tiptoeing through the litter box. At bedtime, he climbs up next to Mom and nestles underneath the covers — a peaceful end to a rambunctious day. “He’s very loyal,” Ivanisevic says. “He never scratches or bites. I just love him.”

NAMES: Delta and Buster

BREEDS: Japanese chin and bulldog

SIZES: 11 and 68 pounds

AGES: 5 and 1

MOM: Robin Bruce

As a single mother of two preteens, Robin Bruce says she gave up on getting a man in the house, so she got a bulldog instead. “The dogs help teach the kids responsibility,” she says. The yard doesn’t have a fence, so Buster and Delta must be walked every morning and evening. Delta is the quintessential lap dog and queen of the house. Buster is energetic and loves to play, but he can’t resist his favorite napping spot on the cool, stone entryway. “He’s just crazy-happy,” Bruce says, adding that the pair together just make life more interesting. “They’re more to us than dogs.”

NAMES: Brutus and Bobo

BREEDS: chihuahua

SIZES: 8.5 and 10 pounds

AGES: 11 and 10

PARENTS: James and Renee Cameron

If you’re a guest in the Cameron home, you might notice one, two, three or more toys mysteriously gather near your feet. “Then you look down, and you have a semicircle of five toys around you,” Renee Cameron says. That’s the work of Brutus the Chihuahua, eager to play and trying to figure out your preference — a fleecy, stuffed bone? Or how about one that squeaks? Brutus and his more reserved partner, Bobo, are simply known as “the boyz”, and they’re pretty much inseparable. “If you have one small dog, you should also have two. They love one another so much,” Cameron says. And they both have their own set of talents and quirks. Bobo does his part of the yard work by furiously digging next to Cameron while she gardens: “As if he’s helping me.” She says he’s definitely the alpha dog and helps keep tabs on Brutus, the 11-year-old “perpetual puppy”.

NAME: Ada

BREED: pug

SIZE: 18 pounds

AGE: 9

MOM: Lori McCracken

Ada’s one lucky dog. She was a puppy mill victim, and when Lori McCracken found Ada, she knew she had to save her. “She probably had about two more weeks to live,” McCracken says. Suffering from pneumonia, ear mites and a torn retina, Ada underwent several weeks of treatments and surgeries before she could live a normal life. Today, she’s a happy, middle-aged pug that goes nowhere without her favorite stuffed cow. At bedtime, she clutches the toy in her mouth before falling asleep.

“It’s like her little binky.” McCracken is a local acoustic guitarist and singer-songwriter and can tell when she has created a good song because Ada pays attention. But as far as tricks, “She’s a first-class lap dog.”