A new drinking-and-eating spot, Whitehall Exchange, recently opened in the former Cretia’s and Nodding Dog Coffee Co. space at Bishop and Seventh.

If someone asks, “Where can I get great Mexican seafood in Dallas?”, the answer is almost always La Calle Doce.

Chicken Scratch, in the former Jack’s Backyard space on Fort Worth Avenue, has opened,  and if you like chicken, and food from owner Tim Byres (chef at Smoke), you definitely need to try this place.

The chicken comes fried or a la pecan rotisserie, and chicken from both preparations was moist and flavorful. Plates come with a choice of two sides, a huge biscuit and homemade bread-and-butter pickles for about $9. Family-style orders come with half or whole chickens, fried chicken tenders, sides and biscuits for $24 and $36. There is also a kid’s menu, including juice popsicles.  The space includes some covered outdoor seating, and exterior lighting is unique.  The outdoor stage is a wooden work of art by local Oak Cliff artisan Gary Buckner.  The restaurant adjoins the newly opened Foundry Bar, so the combination should become a real hangout.

Where do I begin to praise the Trocard ($10, purchased, available at Spec’s)? Cheap wine does not get much better than this:

• It’s a previous vintage, and it’s still yummy.

• Classic white Bordeaux, made with sauvignon blanc. That means not much fruit and certainly none of that New World grapefruit stuff. That’s something one doesn’t see enough anymore because too many French producers are on a misguided quest to make their wine taste like it came from somewhere else.

• Clean, crisp, grassy and fresh. Just enough of everything to make it stand out, from aroma to finish, but not too much of anything. And only 12 1/2 percent alcohol.

• A simple wine that proves the adage that simple does not have to mean inadequate.

Serve this chilled on its own, or with almost anything that goes with white wine, whether seafood, chicken. or salads. And it’s probably a good match with an uncomplicated cream-style sauce (chicken fried steak or chicken pot pie, for example). Highly recommended and almost certainly in the 2013 $10 Hall of Fame.

One of the few remaining obstacles facing Texas wine is that too many consumers think it’s not any good — even though they’ve never tasted it.

My go-to pizza spot has been closed for several weeks, but Oak Cliff Pizza & Pasta is expected to reopen next week.

Owner Jason Laxon sold the restaurant to his former cook, David Ramirez, and Ramirez’s brother, Juan Ramirez. The Ramirezes are remodeling, making cosmetic changes to the interior, and they’re waiting for their Certificate of Occupancy to be approved.

The menu, prices and hours are expected to be about the same as before. We noticed the name has changed on the website to David’s Oak Cliff Pizza & Pasta.

Laxon opened Oak Cliff Pizza & Pasta  in 2008.

The owners of Veritas and Restaurant Ava have renamed their planned Bishop Arts restaurant. Boulevardier is the new name for a French/American bistro in the space formerly occupied by Decanter and Cafe Madrid. The owners originally had announced the restaurant would be called Left Bank.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports the restaurant, from chef/owners Randall Copeland and Nathan Tate, will open this summer.

I have finally figured out why Americans don’t drink more rose, and it’s not what I thought — that we confuse rose with sweet pink wines like white zinfandel. The real reason? It doesn’t taste like red wine.

How else to account for the odd reviews for the Le Cirque ($11, purchased, available at Spec’s) on CellarTracker, the blog’s unoffical wine inventory tracking software? Several of the writers complained that the wine was too light, and they were exactly right — if they were reviewing cabernet sauvignon. But since the Le Cirque is rose, that’s a good thing. Roses are supposed to be light and refreshing.

In fact, my only complaint about this rose, which is from southern France, was price — I thought it was $9 and not $11 when I bought it. Having said that, it was very nicely done: Bone dry, with lots of cranberry fruit that gave it a pleasant acidity to balance the fruitiness. In this, it is a good example of what a grape like grenache can do for a rose. Pair this with salads and even lightly spicy foods, since there’s enough fruit to handle the spice.

And yes, chill it and drink it on its own and ponder the metaphysical question of why more Americans don’t appreciate rose.

We gotta keep it real here. I’ve only ever eaten at Bolsa twice. The prices, for me, put Bolsa in the special-occasion bracket, but then it’s not where I want to eat on my birthday. So I rarely get the opportunity.

But, fellow renters and beatniks, there is hope for us: Bolsa happy hour.

From 3-5 p.m. Monday-Friday and all day on Tuesdays, every cocktail on the Bolsa menu is $5. This is an opportunity to sip fancy, labor-intensive cocktails at half the regular price and rub elbows at the bar with well-heeled Cliffites who will find you utterly Bohemian.

Bolsa is in a converted mechanic’s shop, the Settles Garage, at West Davis and Llewellyn. It boasts the loveliest dining patio in Oak Cliff, plus a friendly and professional staff.

We tried three cocktails. The Blackberry Crush contains muddled blackberries, orange-flavored vodka, orange liqueur and ginger beer. It was pretty and refreshing, but it tasted mostly of ginger beer. We moved on to the Mad Hatter. This is muddled raspberries and strawberries, vodka, citrus liqueur and champagne. I could drink them all day. We wondered how we might make a pitcher of them at home. Finally, we asked out the prettiest girl at the dance: Rita Rioja. This is tequila and citrus juices with a beet puree. “It’s basically a beet margarita,” our bartender told us. It is maybe the most unusual cocktail I’ve ever tasted and certainly among the most delightful.

It is sweet with a slight taste of beets, and it is the fairest cocktail of them all.

Earlier that day, my happy-hour pal had asked her manicurist for beet-colored polish. We think the manicurist was a shade off:

Bolsa also offers food at happy hour. Along with flat breads, which are about $14 each, there are several sandwiches for around $8 each. Not a bad deal at all.

So much for wondering about the quality of California wine. Or thinking that wine prices were going to increase this year.

Which says pretty much everything that needs to be said about the Maxwell Creek ($10, purchased, available at World Market), which is apparently a second label from St. Supery, a long-established and classy Napa producer. Wineries do second labels to sell cheaper versions of their better known wines without having to discount the latter. Second labels are usually made by the same winemaker at the same facility, though the grapes may not be of the same quality.

In this, second labels are usually a value, and the Maxwell Creek is a ridiculous value. It’s top-notch Napa wine; think of it as a much simpler version of something like St. Supery or Grgich sauvignon blanc, but with the same attention to detail and reflection of terroir. Look for California grassiness and some minerality on the finish, with a bit of citrus zest. This is a crisp and refreshing wine, yet surprisingly subtle. And, though it’s a little thin in the middle, it’s not thin enough to make a difference at this price — or at $15 or $18, for that matter.

Chill this and drink it on its own, or with almost any grilled seafood or chicken dish. Highly recommended — which is saying something, because the main reason I bought it, honestly, was that I didn’t think it could be any good and so could write something curmudgeonly about it.