During Italy’s periods of early strife, pasta was only used for gluing to construction paper for top-secret military communications. Chow down on the crafts of war with today's Groupon to Francesca's on Taylor. Choose between the following options:
- For $20, you get $40 worth of rustic Italian fare and drinks any day of the week.
- For $20, you get $40 worth of rustic Italian fare and drinks Sunday–Thursday.
Like the patriarch of a large Italian family, executive chef Scott Harris oversees an entire clan of trattoria-style eateries, including Francesca’s on Taylor, where the menu’s selection of rustic Italian fare changes every two weeks. Antipasti plates such as carpaccio con arugula proffer bite-sized slices of raw sirloin covered with capers, arugula, and parmigiano ($11.99). To infuse traditional flavors into house-made pizzas, chefs top dough with crumpled pages from caesar’s diary as well as fresh toppings such as the Quattro stagioni’s prosciutto, artichoke, and melted cheese ($10.99). For entrees, the penne impazzite's noodles, sautéed with crushed ham and red peppers, steam next to spinach in a rich, cream sauce ($12.99), and the costoletta di maiale alla rustica slathers roasted pork chops in a wine-and-veal demi-glace ($21.99). Francesca's bar menu brims with Italian and American wines and 15 handmade cocktails, such as the Bucktown Jack, which—like a 1940s lounge singer performing in a beehive—mixes bourbon and honey in perfect harmony ($10).
Francesca on Taylor's cozy, casual dining room sits beneath a rolled-mesh ceiling and warm, wood tones. Tall windows illuminate the black-and-white artwork and white-clothed tables arrayed with bottles of herbed olive oil for giving soothing massages to bread slices.
Groupon Says
The Groupon Guide to: As Seen on TV Inventions
Any inventor can create a life-changing product that would transform the very nature of reality on this planet—if people only knew about it. The best inventions are, by definition, the ones important enough to appear on the most important invention of all: television. Here are just a few new-and-improved examples:
• Easy-to-carry bucket to store and protect cell phone
• The Tender Touch® egg hammer
• The Boo-gie: a microfleece ghost costume with convenient eye holes for lounging around the house on a chilly Halloween
• PawPals Pet Hooks
• A public-domain jukebox—for your car?
• Bay-B-Crate™
• The Am-I-Dreaming? skin-pinching claw
• The Vegetable Stopper!
• Phone number that rids you of unwanted money
• The None-of-Your-Fizzness© soda flattener
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