The best sauces, like the best imaginary friends, are rich and from the Mediterranean. Dine alone or with Esmeralda the railroad tycoon with this Groupon.

Choose Between Two Options

$34 for an Italian meal for two (up to a $69.90 total value)

• Two pasta or pizza entrees (up to a $22 value each)
• Two Aperol spritzes (a $12 value each)

$65 for an Italian meal for four (up to a $139.80 total value)

• Four pasta or pizza entrees (up to a $22 value each)
• Four Aperol spritzes (a $12 value each)

The menu includes entrees such as capricciosa pizza with smoked ham and fontina or squid-ink spaghetti tossed with local calamari. The Aperol spritz is an apéritif made with prosecco, soda water, and orange-flavored Aperol liqueur. Patrons can also opt to substitute any nonalcoholic beverage on the menu.

Cantinetta Luca

At Cantinetta Luca, Chef Jason Balestrieri rolls out handmade pastas, wood-oven-baked pizza, and roasted whole fish. Enhanced by seasonal, local ingredients, his family-style Italian cooking earned Cantinetta Luca a 2012 readers’ award for Best Restaurant in Carmel from Monterey County Weekly. Balestrieri also cures salumi in-house to fill his signature antipasti plates and the display cases of his salumeria next door.

Cantinetta Luca’s interior decor mirrors the Old World-style eats. Exposed brick covers a barrel-vaulted ceiling in one room, and dark-wood rafters crisscross overhead in another. Elsewhere, modern light fixtures cast their glow across contemporary furnishings, chiseled wood, and pillars of string cheese.