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 $35, you get $70 worth of Italian cuisine at The Anaheim White House.

Owner and CNN Hero, Bruno Serato, presents diners with variegated menus packed with Italian and seafood entrees prepared under the culinary eye of Executive Chef Eddie Meza. Bob for apples of dough with the gnocchi gorgonzola, with small potato and flour dumplings soaking up the flavor of tomato and gorgonzola sauce ($14.95 lunch; $19.95 dinner). The restaurant's signature dish, brasato piemontese, sports boneless beef short ribs braised in an italian barolo reduction for three hours and topped with a touch of horseradish and a dash of extravagance ($22.95 lunch; $30.50 dinner). Steamed salmon sweetens its style atop belgiun white chocolate mashed-potato purée ($23.95 lunch; $29.95 dinner), and the pesce bianco's sautéed whitefish inherits a spicy attitude by hanging around moroccan couscous and japanese peppers ($17.95 lunch only).

Inside the restaurant, set in a historic 1909 home, elegance pours from the private dining and banquet rooms' furniture and tapestries, with gold and silver utensils laid out on decorated tables and crystal chandeliers overhead. The Anaheim White House occasionally plays host to hungry celebs and more regularly performs charitable acts—the restaurant serves 300 free dinners to homeless motel kids every night.