What You'll Get
Like attaching a fake mustache to a Halloween mask or cleverly changing your name from Obi-Wan Kenobi to Ben Kenobi, adding a new ingredient to something familiar can render it delightfully unrecognizable. Enjoy inventive eats with today’s Groupon: for $45, you get a five-course meal with wine pairings at Fig Tree Cafe (up to a $100 value). The five courses include:
- First course:
- Olive tapenade, marinated mushrooms, or eggplant caponata (up to an $8 value)
- A glass of wine (a $12 value)<p>
- Second course:
- Traditional bruschetta, meatballs, or spicy sausage (up to an $8 value)
- A glass of wine (a $12 value)<p>
- Third course:
- House, spinach, or apple salad (up to an $8 value)
- A glass of wine (a $12 value)<p>
- Fourth course:
- Cannelloni, short ribs, Fig Tree pizza (may substitue with margherita pizza), or fish of the day (up to a $16 value)
- A glass of wine (a $12 value)<p>
- Fifth course:
- Frozen key-lime pie or tiramisu (up to a $7 value)
- A latte, cappuccino, or moscato dessert wine (up to a $5 value)
Alberto Morreale, Fig Tree Cafe’s head chef, draws upon organic and locally farmed ingredients, herbs grown at their Pacific Beach location, and free-range eggs from Ramona to fashion dishes that complement glasses of wine in a charmingly rough-hewn dining room. Diners approach the first course with a salivating palate ready to devour marinated mushrooms basking in oil, vinegar, red peppers, and garlic. The second level of feasting lets patrons call upon meatballs that splash through mushroom-and-red-wine reduction sauce like Louis XIV in his wading pool. Tongues toss and turn in the chloroplast bed sheets of the restaurant’s verdant salads before heartily noshing on the wild Alaskan salmon or cannelloni—large tube pasta packed with free-range chicken breast, fontina cheese, and basil. Each of the first four courses is paired with glasses of wine that allow patrons to surround themselves in joviality without adopting a litter of piñatas. Postfeast lethargy flees before a dessert accompanied by sips of a warm, caffeine-laden beverage or sweet moscato made from the tears of gingerbread men. Fig Tree Cafe’s ambient lighting dances off a three-tier wine rack beneath exposed-brick and slate walls and a backlit punched-metal-tree illustration.
The Fine Print
Promotional value expires Apr 11, 2012. Amount paid never expires. Limit 6 per person. Dine-in only. Valid only for prix fixe menu. Merchant is solely responsible to purchasers for the care and quality of the advertised goods and services.
About Fig Tree Café
At a young age, Alberto Morreale decided on a career as a chef, leaving his Sicilian hometown to cook in restaurants across northern Italy. After moving to San Diego, he started synthesizing Californian influences with his Old World culinary techniques, creating dishes such as his housemade lobster ravioli with chipotle-mascarpone-cilantro sauce and a dollop of tequila.
Chef Morreale’s use of local ingredients in his creative recipes adds to the freshness of dishes at both Fig Tree Café locations—winning the Hillcrest café second place in CityVoter’s Best Brunch category in 2011. The two cafés bake their breads in house, grow their own sprigs of rosemary, and catch their own silverware in a clear mountain stream. The kitchen sources ingredients from area producers, such as a ranch 35 miles outside of town, which supplies the restaurant with natural, free-range eggs.