Here are a few upcoming wine and beer dinners across the Triangle:

• Hope Valley Bottle Shop has seven upcoming wine dinners, including an Italian wine dinner at 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 20 at Nana's in Durham. It cost $55. To see the complete list of wine dinners, go HERE. Call 493-8545 for a reservation.
• Guglhupf in Durham is offering an Austrian wine dinner at 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 21. For details and the menu, go HERE. For a reservation, call 401-2600.

• Jibarra restaurant in Raleigh is offering a four-course dinner with five Saison-style beer pairings. The dinner is 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 21. It costs $55. Go HERE for details and menu. Call 755-0556 for a reservation.
• Durham’s Vin Rouge is partnering with Wine Authorities to offer a five-course wine dinner at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 22. Winemaker Joseph Landron will be the special guest. It costs $75. Go HERE for the menu. Call 416-0466 for a reservation. (If you can’t make the dinner, you can meet Landron and taste his wines from 5-6:30 p.m. Thursday at Wine Authorities. For more information, go to http://wineauthorities.com.)
• Jujube restaurant in Chapel Hill is offering a four-course dinner with wine pairings  from the Paul Hobbs Winery. It will be 7 p.m. March 28. Go HERE for the menu. Call 960-0555 for a reservation. It costs $57.50. 
• ADDED: Weathervane, the restaurant at A Southern Season in Chapel Hill, is offering a five-course dinner featuring wines from Gil Family Estates at 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 28. Go HERE to read the menu. It costs $70. To make a reservation, call 929-9466.

The Ibarra family, the restauratuers behind Jibarra and the El Rodeo restaurants across the Triangle, are converting their original Hillsborough Street location to a new concept.

Charlie Ibarra, one of the younger sons of the Ibarra family, is joining forces with his two brothers, Jessie and Hector, to transform the space into Chile Bomba. He says it will be a more playful concept with Mexican pop art on the walls and a more condensed Tex Mex menu with jalapeno hush puppies and burrito baskets.

The restaurant is at 2400 Hillsborough Street and next door to a Chipotle that will open this fall. It is across the street from N.C. State University. This was the original location of the Ibarra family's first El Rodeo restaurant that opened 18 years ago.

Ibarra hopes the transformation will be complete the week of Aug. 16th.

Cantina South, a modern Mexican restaurant, will hopefully open by the end of June in the space formerly occupied by Bogart's in Raleigh's Glenwood South area.

Kevin Summers, a former co-founder of Rocky Top Hospitality and restaurant consultant, explained that he had been looking for the right restaurant ownership opportunity. When he heard that Rocky Top Hospitality owner Dean Ogan was giving up his lease at the 510 Glenwood Ave space that Bogart's occupied, Summers thought he had a good concept and had found his opportunity to return to being a restaurant owner. 

Cantina South will serve modern Mexican cuisine with entrees between $13 and $20, specialty margaritas and more than 50 tequilas. It will be a high-energy fun restaurant offering late-night music with a focus on country and rock music.

The chef is David Peraza, who was a consultant chef for the opening of Mez in Durham and Jibarra when it moved to downtown Raleigh. The menu features freshly-made guacamole prepared tableside, a selection of ceviches and most intriguing to me, duck confit in flautas and carnitas.

Summers' business partners include Bill Holt, who the Melting Pot restaurant in Raleigh, and Dave Medvetz, president of Blue Sky Services, a real estate and contracting firm in Raleigh.

Summers said Cantina South should open by the end of June but could get pushed until early July.

REMINDER: On Wednesday, Jibarra will host the first dinner in its new “Madre Mia” series featuring dishes inspired by the Ibarra family’s homestyle favorites.

Price for the three-course dinner is $25, with 10 percent of the proceeds going to the nonprofit organization Share Our Strength.

You can find further details, including the menu, here.

Jibarra is featuring a fall happy hour special, with $3 appetizers at the bar from 5-7pm.

That's in addition to daily ongoing specials such as half price bottles of wine on Sunday nights. Check out the full schedule of weekly specials here.

Downtown Raleigh restaurant Jibarra has vegetarian items on the menu which include two creamy soups, some salads (if you leave the meat off), a fruit plate offered for the weekend brunch and three entrees such as the Tacos a la Vegetariana (served for lunch and dinner), Queso en Amarillito and Chile Relleno y Hojaldrado (served only at dinner.) They also have a small plate, Queso Fundido, which is served at lunch and dinner. Vegans beware, you'll have to request that cheeses and meats are left off the salads and realistically the only entree that could work without cheese is the Tacos a la Vegetariana. I'll most likely try it myself soon and will add an update with specifics. See Greg Cox's full review here.

Greg Cox reviews the new lower-priced, downtown Jibarra in this story. He gives it 3 1/2 stars.

In his Quick Bites column, he takes a sip at a new member of Raleigh's bar scene, Foundation. 

Jibarra is the host of this month's Green Plate Special, a monthly dinner showcasing the produce of the Moore Square Farmers' Market in downtown Raleigh. Among the courses slated for the tasting menu are an heirloom tomato salad with honey-sweetened chorizo oil, littleneck clams in spicy coconut milk broth, and masa-encrusted soft shell crabs or vermilion snapper (depending on availability) with local vegetables.

The Green Plate Special will be offered this Wednesday from 5-10pm, for $35 per person.