The Hungry Italian

Inferno to the Rescue: A Karma-Christmas Story

Fig.1 The Inferno team. The funny thing is that Marcella actually ran away with the bowl of pasta she's holding as soon as the picture was taken.

Here comes another Christmas, and somewhere John Lennon is still asking, "So what have you done?" Before you all stop reading, let me assure you there won't be any preaching in this post; rather, this post will bring attention to what a certain restaurant in Montreal has done to help embody the spirit of the season.
Karma Christmas is the brainchild of food writer and all around swell person, Marcella DeVincenzo, aka. EatalianGirl. The idea behind Karma Christmas is simple. Come to a restaurant and eat way too much food for ten bucks, all that is required of you is to bring a grocery bag full of non-perishable food items for Sun Youth.
We booked a restaurant and sold out of tickets very quickly. (Which is easy to do when tickets only cost ten dollars.) The theme for the event was Italian Sunday Lunch, a la Nonna: Big bowls of pasta, meatballs, sausages, salad and dessert.
The proverbial unforeseen problem, (which always occurs when organising events such as these) came in the form of the original restaurant not being able to host the event then only two weeks away. Enter Restorante Inferno (located on Dante and Ste-Dominique in Little Italy.) A plea for help was met by Chef Nick and his cohorts with a resounding show of benevolence. Not only did Chef Nick open his restaurant on Sunday (a day the restaurant is usually closed) but he overfed us with delicious pasta, mounds of meat, and a dessert that perfectly possessed the essence of the "Italian Grandmother". His staff not only worked for free, but also went above and beyond what Marcella and I expected. Dante Alighieri would have been amiss with this Inferno: No hell or pergatory here, just good intentions.
I've since returned to Inferno for purely selfish reasons, I was hungry. I had a bowl of perfectly prepared Trippa and sampled a deeply flavoured lentil soup. I'll be back again soon to sample some menu standouts that connected with the food neurons in my head, namely, the Mac&Cheese Cavatelli and Shortribs. (The menu, written on a blackboard, changes regularly.)
So a big thank you to Chef Nick, Mark, Fabrizio, Piero, Tony and everyone who attended. As a result of everone's selflessness, over 50 heaping bags of food was loaded into the back of a Sun Youth truck.
Merry Christmas.