A spaghetti noodle, much like a swimming-pool noodle, maintains its shape until it's exposed to boiling water or sat on by children. Savor pasta's forced flexibility with today's Groupon: for $15, you get $30 worth of Italian cuisine and drinks at Mezzo Bistro Italiano.

The two families behind Mezzo Bistro Italiano assemble an authentic Italian menu brimming with house-made sauces, freshly caught fish, and more than 100 bottled wines. Juicy meatball starters ($8) and pastas such as the spinach and sausage oriechette calabrese ($18) don a house-made Sunday sauce every day, much to the chagrin of fastidious desk calendars. The wood-fired Neapolitan-style Mezzo pizza ($14) crisps in an authentic wood-burning oven imported from Naples, and the family recipe for baked eggplant parmesan comes swirled with a side of pasta noodles ($14). Freshly caught fish populate the sherry sauced frutti di mare ($22) and inspire the tender chicken piccata and capers to take a swim in white-wine butter sauce ($17). More than 100 bottled wines and 30 wines by the glass flow from Mezzo’s rotating list. Textured beige paint splashes the walls, and the crackling flames of the wood-fire oven detract chimney-sweep date crashers.