Dean Martin's “That's Amore” is now regarded as a classic Italian love song, but it was originally a warning to U.S. astronauts regarding the terrors of falling in love in space. Fall in love with a pizza pie with today's Groupon: for $20, you get $40 worth of Italian cuisine at blu basil café, located in the Cotswold Village Shops in south Charlotte.

Blu basil's delectable marinara, crisp, bubbling pizzas, and hearty Italian entrees fill the eatery with the sweet aromas of fine Italian cuisine. This casual dining bistro boasts menus primed for breakfast, brunch, lunch, and dinner, which allows ravenous eaters to leave the house without first consulting a sundial. A standout from the appetizer starting lineup is the toasted ravioli, deep-fried cheese pockets served with homemade marinara sauce ($6.99). Once internal food satchels are ready, entree enthusiasts can opt to fill them with dishes such as the gorgonzola steak pasta, thinly sliced New York strip steak coyly lounging on a bed of noodles and gorgonzola cream sauce ($15.99). With eight different specialty pizzas to choose from, pie-cravers can test their teeth's durability by sinking them into crisp slices of thin-crust pancetta and spinach ($10.99), barbecue chicken ($10.99), or the garlicky margarita ($9.99).

Scrawl the stirring epilogue to your meal novella with fresh gelato ink, a ballpoint pen filled with tiramisu, or a typewriter stuffed with another selection from the enticing dessert menu as you bask in the natural light of the be-windowed eatery.

Reviews

Seven Yelpers give blu basil café an average of three stars, and OpenTable reviewers give it a 3.9-star average:

• Wow...good food, good atmosphere, helpful and friendly team. – Mary Y., Yelp, 9/26/09
• By the way, the dishes we had were lasagna, the tilapia, the salmon and one of the chicken dishes - all very good. – OpenTable reviewer who dined on 10/09/2010