A marriage between two cuisines is preferable to a marriage between two clones of Sylvester Stallone, a process that eventually results in a baby reared on raw eggs and meat punching bags. Savor a simpler fusion with today's Groupon: for $30, you get $60 worth of Nouveau Texas cuisine at August E's in Fredericksburg.

Executive chef Leu Savanh fuses a sophisticated menu of traditional Texan fare and Asian cuisine at August E's, an upscale eatery highlighted in the New York Times and Southern Living. The imaginative meal creator uses local suppliers and his own garden of herbs, tomatoes, and peppers to create such delectable dishes as the citrus truffle salad, a bed of organic butter lettuce spritzed with a citrus-truffle vinaigrette and adorned with goat cheese, strawberries, mango, and crushed pecans ($9). Heartier appetites will be appeased by such offerings as the Long Island duck breast, grilled and served alongside whipped mascarpone sweet potatoes and a citrus soy-dressed mix of carrots and broccolini ($33). The eclectic restaurant also stocks a copious sushi menu with items such as the screaming salmon maki—salmon tangled with spicy sauce, shaved scallion, cucumber, and sesame ($9)—the hamachi scallion roll with chopped hamachi, cucumber, and scallions, veiled in nori and rice and wrapped in sashimi sliced hamachi ($16), in addition to a smattering of seasoned and uncooked Swedish Fish.

Reviews

Southern Living magazine, In Mamas Kitchen and the Texas Food and Wine Gourmet all positively reviewed August E's. Zagat gives the business a 26 for food, a 24 for décor, and a 22 for service.

• a refined aesthetic that extends to every detail of the well-appointed dining room and to the food which stands as a paradigm for the subtlety of nouveau Texas cuisine. – Diana Serbe, In Mamas Kitchen
• You can get the traditional inch-thick aged Prime rib eye, grilled to perfection over a mesquite fire. – Cassandra M. Vanhooser, Southern Living