Coffee is often called a miracle drug, not only because it cures numerous diseases, including ataxia and ear splints, but also because it has the amazing power to either wake you up or to help you relax. Wake up or unwind with today's Groupon: for $12, you get $25 worth of espresso and café dining with Middle Eastern influences at B&O Espresso, a full-service eatery and espresso bar in Capitol Hill.

B&O Espresso infuses a little Arabic into its complete dining menu, full-service espresso bar, and decadent desserts. Start your day early or a little less early with a breakfast or brunch of shakshuka (two poached eggs in house-made marinara sauce with peppers, potatoes, and pita bread; $9.75) paired with a macchiato ($2.15) off the drink menu. Mid-day matchmakers can also set up a lunch date with a noontime chicken schwarma sandwich (pita bread with garlic aioli; $10) and a Turkish coffee ($3.75).

If you'd like to keep your meal as light and social as a freshman mixer inside a globetrotting eccentric's hot-air balloon, make a dinner out of B&O's small plates and house specials by passing around deliriously delicious Egyptian foul (fava beans with fresh garlic, cumin, olive oil, and hummus or hard-boiled egg; $9) in between rounds of hummus plates ($9) and stuffed dates wrapped in pancetta and served with melon balls ($8). Heartier hungers, however, will be magnetically drawn to the house special: grilled flank steak slathered in a port wine sauce and served with olive-oil mashed potatoes and sautéed spinach ($12). Like its small plates, B&O's massive line-up of desserts is best when shared, so treat yourself and all your stuffed-animal dining companions to apple crisp ($7.25), brioche bread pudding ($6.25), and black muddy river (chocolate mousse laced with espresso, orange liqueur, and rum; $7.25).

Dine-in only. Not valid toward whole cakes.

Reviews

B&O Espresso has a glowing review in the Seattle pi and in The Stranger. B&O has a four-star average rating from more than 275 Yelpers and nearly 60 Citysearchers. Eighty-seven percent of Urbanspooners like it.

• B&O Espresso is the creme de la crema of Seattle java joints, its Grande Dame of Espresso. With its signature gigantic stained-glass owls, 1980s-era opera posters, eggplant-colored walls and ceiling, Capitol Hill's B&O is an institution, a Seattle classic for 30 years. It's a cafe with perfect pitch: elegant, yet cozy and unpretentious; ingredients of high quality with reasonable prices. – Lisa Stiffler, Seattle pi