Casually dropping knowledge of foreign cuisine is a way to impress cocktail-party guests without reciting the Declaration of Independence backward or balancing a wine glass on your nose. Pepper your conversations with delectable data with today's Groupon: for $10, you get $20 worth of Uzbek fare and drinks at Diora Restaurant in Buffalo Grove.
Diora Restaurant's Uzbek chef transports diners to the Great Silk Road with a menu seasoned with the spices, rich flavors, and culinary history of Uzbekistan. Sample five kinds of kebab grilled over an open fire, such as the ground shish kebab ($9.98) or the savory fish kebab ($9.98). Steamed manti, two pillowy dumplings stuffed with lamb or beef ($7.99), float swiftly from mouth to plate like jittery clouds, and chefs fry tabaka chicken on hot black stones before dousing the juicy poultry in a tomato-herb sauce ($9.98). Diora Restaurant lavishes its dining room with red carpets, white tablecloths, and floor-to-ceiling mirrors ideal for subtly checking out the back of a date's head.
Groupon Says
The Groupon Guide to: Barbecue Secrets
Every barbecue joint boasts a secret ingredient or technique that makes its sauce unlike any other. Since most barbecue chefs have taken these secrets to the grave, here's a new list of public-domain barbecue secrets for the aspiring grillsman:
- Throw recipe thieves off your trail by filling your sauce with decoy ingredients such as talc, water, and heaping spoonfuls of rival sauces.
- Age your sauce in an oak cask for 15 years—it doesn't do anything, but you'll sure be hungry by then.
- Go bananas—add bananas to your sauce!
- BBQ is short for B.B. Queen—the wife of legendary bluesman B.B. King—and real barbecue sauce must contain exactly one of her soulful tears.
- As with success in any field, the real secret ingredient is confidence —except in barbecue sauces, in which it is horseradish.
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