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 $25, you get $50 worth of Italian fare at Rocco's Grill in Lakeway.

Rocco's Grill's menu of handmade pastas, seasonal seafood, hand-cut steaks, and rich desserts snapped up four awards from Citysearch in 2009, including Best Austin Restaurant. The pollo piazza packs mesquite-grilled chicken with prosciutto and fontina cheese ($19), and the trout traina rolls in hazelnuts before donning water wings to splash through a pool of basil-lemon butter ($21). The owner's favorite, lamb trots through a fresh mint-orange sauce ($27). The pepper-steak marsala, a tenderloin coated with coarse black pepper under a glaze of mushroom marsala sauce ($29) stars in a cast of choice cuts that won the Citysearch Best Austin Steak award in 2009, and will give autographs if asked politely.

Rocco's walls pop with lavish murals starring the court jesters, ballerinas, and strongmen that star in Italian-fare folklore. Red and black linens mingle on the dining tables, and crimson drapery stretched across the ceiling softens the sounds of conversation and rocket-powered pepper grinders while a piano sculpture lined with neon lights hovers above the bar.