Italian cuisine was born when, after building the city of Rome, Romulus and Remus discovered Greece didn't deliver to their new address. Taste the origins of an empire with today's Groupon: for $25, you get $50 worth of gourmet, country-style Italian fare at Trattoria Lisina in Driftwood.

At the sprawling estate of Trattoria Lisina, chef John Lichtenberger—who served on the opening team for New York's Le Bernardin, winner of three Michelin stars—plates a seasonal menu of handmade pasta, house-cured meats, and artfully assembled local ingredients. In front of a roaring fireplace, guests sink incisors into calamari ($10) or the shrimp, mussels, and scallops perched atop the linguine allo scoglio's nest of pasta ($19). Diners can also sit at the kitchen bar to get a front-row seat to all the action—chefs popping sausage- and capicola-speckled mangiameli pizzas ($13) into a wood-burning oven and sword-fighting with grilled asparagus. There, chef Lichtenberger grills 16-ounce rib eye steaks over an open flame before topping them in gorgonzola butter and delivering the resulting bistecca al gorgonzola to wooden tables ($32).

In addition to seating options by the roaring fire and the kitchen bar, Trattoria Lisina offers seating on semi-private verandas that show off views of the eatery's 20-acre vineyard and landscaped gardens. Here, senses are transported to the Tuscan countryside with scenic vistas of rolling hills, an authentic bocce-ball court, and Neptune bathing in the sparkling fountain.