Hunger hampers a person's ability to critically reason, as Pandora discovered when she opened a box labeled "Pure Evil" on the off chance that it actually contained leftover doughnuts. Leave food finding to the professionals with today's Groupon: for $49, you get lunch for two at Café Merlot, located at the Bernardo Winery in Rancho Bernardo (a $114.26 value).
Owners Toni and Rick Kraft, chef Daniel Reynolds, and sous chef Stella Midori-Mokofski transform their love of food and years of culinary expertise into innovative menus infused with a rustic, Southern Californian elegance. A prix fixe spread satiates midday munchies, showcasing a microfarm-sourced pasta dish or entree salad, such as the Northwest Atlantic salmon salad, a fresh haul of produce and fish decked out with lemon dressing. Quench noontime thirst with pitchers of house sangria or mimosas and infused water that hint at flavors of lemon and lavender or lemon and rosemary. The soup du jour warms the bones with freshly harvested, deliciously heated ingredients, and the dessert sampler fills empty corners of the stomach with confectionary care.
Warm light and verdant vegetation vitalize Café Merlot's outdoor patio, enticing office workers to long lunches and doctors to midsurgery siestas. The spaciously arranged dining room bathes diners in natural light as they lounge in broad-backed chairs, and the shaded patio facilitates alfresco eating.
Groupon Says
The Groupon Guide to: Personal Happiness
There are many factors that determine a person's happiness, from their serotonin levels to the number of times they wash their hair per day. To help you feel great, take inspiration from some famous sad sacks who learned to feel good about themselves:
Abraham Lincoln: "Honest Abe" gained that ironic nickname after his first presidential address, when he admitted that he was actually Zeke Chalmers, professional con man, unlicensed dentist, and wanted falcon poacher. Despite living a life of ill repute, Lincoln/Chalmers vowed to become a new man, saying he found the positivity necessary to be president in a book of inspirational limericks.
Henry Ford: Noted grump Henry Ford famously invented the automobile after being insulted by the groom at a horse wedding, then a common ceremony. Although the irritable inventor initially believed he was "too glum to be a success," Ford turned his frown upside down via an experimental surgery that replaced his facial muscles with upturned bronze implants. His smiling, bulletproof face became one of the richest, most famous visages in the country.
CoCo, the Sign-Language Gorilla: Like most animals who have been granted the curse of speech but not the Cartesian knowledge of the self to cope with it, CoCo's first words were an anguished "Why am I?" CoCo later became happy when she found a banana, then sad again after she ate the banana, then happy again with a different banana, then sad again, on and on, over and over again without end.
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