After properly cooking a lobster, its once-brown exoskeleton turns bright red, letting chefs know that it's both ready to serve and profoundly embarrassed for showing up without pants. Make a meal of deliciously mortified seafood with today's Groupon: for $12, you get $24 worth of seafood, steaks, and American fare at Latitude 36 in Cornelius.

Latitude 36's menu teems with savory seafood, stately burgers, and crisp salads. Liberate Peel and Eat shrimp ($9.95/1/2 lb.; $18.95/lb.) from their restrictive shells, a process as delightful as unwrapping your family's Christmas presents as they sleep. Patio diners can anchor their forks in pan-seared island-style grouper, redolent with Caribbean spices and drizzled with pineapple-and-orange salsa ($18.95), as they feel a cool breeze cross Lake Norman and sweep through their fingertips. In the seafood pasta, schools of red snapper, crab meat, and langoustine mingle as they glide through white-wine sauce, each dressed impeccably with bowtie pasta and sautéed-herb cuff links ($18.95). Live music appeases ears as teeth gnaw through Caliente and Cool burgers, which stack half-pound char-grilled Angus burgers with pepper jack cheese and fried jalapeño peppers ($9.95).