Making food from scratch typically requires advance preparation, adherence to a recipe, and your third and final genie wish. Save the third wish for more wishes with today’s Groupon to Aldo’s Pasta Bar and Italian Ristorante in New Westminster. Choose between the following options:

• For $30, you get an Italian dinner for two (up to a $61 total value), which includes:
• One antipasti starter (up to a $14 value)
• One pasta dish (a $17 value)
• One entree (a $22 value)
• One dessert (a $8 value)<p>
• For $55, you get an Italian dinner for four (up to a $120 value), which includes:
• One antipasti starter (up to a $14 value)
• One salad (up to a $12 value)
• Two pasta dishes (up to a $34 value)
• Two entrees (up to a $44 value)
• Two desserts (up to a $16 value)
  
  

Diners open Aldo’s Pasta Bar’s menu to discover a wide selection of made-to-order southern Italian cuisine, including homemade sauces, baked pasta, and tender cuts of meat. The house antipasto invites culinary compatriots to sample the flavours of fresh capicollo, salami, cheese, and marinated vegetables. Forks parachute down from the ceiling to pierce calamari atop a romaine salad tossed with a house-made tomato vinaigrette. In the kitchen, chefs stuff cannelloni with veal and pork, cover their creation in a light meat sauce, and then send the pasta dish to the oven to bake. Entrees run the gamut from seafood to meat, such as capicollo and mozzarella surfing on top of a tender veal cutlet doused in homemade tomato sauce. The tiramisu’s Italian biscuits, while being judged by a panel of sugar cubes, dive into espresso and seven different liqueurs before wrapping themselves in mascarpone cheese and whipped-cream topping.

Black-and-white photographs peer down from walls, reminding dinner parties of the days before colour and movement as they sit in upholstered booths lined with grape-vine patterns. Guests can ask servers to top off their glasses with one of the restaurant’s daily-featured wines (not included in today’s Groupon).