Cooking food over an open flame can impart smoky flavour and seal in savoury juices, but cooking food over an eternal flame can get a bobsledding team kicked out of the Olympics. Get your fill of flame-cooked fare with today's Groupon: for $30, you get $60 worth of eclectic fare and drinks at Terra Restaurant in Thornhill. Groupon holders get $70 worth of fare and drinks if they redeem their Groupon on a Monday.

Awarded Best Eclectic Cuisine in Toronto by Zagat, Terra Restaurant has been filling guest bellies with seasonal and locally sourced eclectic fare since 1995. With a selection of menus, guests can gain temporary citizenship at the Oyster & Tapas Bar-Lounge, reaping the territory's bounty of vegetarian spring rolls, lobster pot-sticker dumplings, or a plate of a half-dozen oysters (starting at $17.70). Recent lunch items, such as grilled prawns over thai cucumber salad ($17.95), invite guests to mine flavours of the deep, and the wild-mushroom risotto captures the essence of nature more eloquently than a haiku about sleeping bags ($20.95). On the most recent menu, dinner-ready tongues engage in friendly sparring matches with panko-crusted crab cakes ($16.95) and grilled Atlantic salmon with potatoes in citrus-butter sauce ($36.95).

Cocktails and martinis, such as the Thornhill (905) Bellini with vanilla vodka and prosecco ($13.95), liquidize courage, and a list of more than 500 wines, such as the Spanish 2002 Segura Viudas brut reserva ($3.50 for 3 oz. glass) and the redder colour of 2004 Woolshed shiraz from Australia ($7.95 for 3 oz.), complement meals like a lovably offbeat roommate. Terra Restaurant's late-night events save diners from postmeal comas with Terra Late Night, when chefs sling tapas and disc jockeys race records on Thursdays until 1 a.m. Terra also presents live jazz music Friday and Saturday nights.

Reviews

TheFiftyBest.com named Terra Restaurant one of the Fifty Best Toronto Restaurants. TripAdvisors give Terra Restaurant a 4.5-owl-eye average, and OpenTable reviewers give it a 4.2-star average. Restaurantica reviewers give the restaurant a 3.9-star average.

• Bold and beautiful. An extraordinary dining experience, with dazzling, imaginatively prepared Euro-Asian cuisine. – TheFiftyBest.com
• Food tasted amazing,location and ambiance very nice. We heard the patio is great during the summer, would certainly visit this summer to check it out. – OpenTable.com reviewer who dined on 2/27/11