Eat, drink, stink. Three words that can only mean one thing: it’s garlic festival month.
For 21 years the Sorrentino’s restaurant group, including its St. Albert location, has been featuring garlic in its April menus and raising funds for various charities in and around the Edmonton area. This year Sorrentino’s returns its garlic festival funds to the Compassion House Foundation.
“We got involved [with Compassion House] about 10 years ago when it first started,” said Stella Rago, operations and marketing director for the Sorrentino’s group. “We did it for five years. When we fulfilled our commitment and the house was self-sustaining, we moved on to other endeavours.”
Rago and her husband Carmelo shifted their fundraising to support first the Lois Hole Hospital and then, for the last five years, prostate cancer.
This year their focus returns to the house named after them: Sorrentino’s Compassion House, which provides accommodation and support for women with breast cancer, and their companions, during diagnosis, treatment and follow-up care at the Cross Cancer Institute in Edmonton. Since opening in 2002 the house has served more than 525 women from communities throughout Alberta, Saskatchewan, B.C., and the Northwest Territories.
But with just six bedroom suites the house can’t meet the demand.
“This year we thought, what would we be supporting?” Stella said Sunday at the launch of the garlic festival. “It was pointed out Sorrentino’s Compassion House was expanding because, unfortunately there’s such a demand for it. So we decided for probably the next two years to support that endeavour.”
The house is trying to raise $5 million to double the size and capacity of the house, improve access and create a sustainability fund.
The group’s largest annual fundraiser had been its Stomp event, held at the Shaw Conference Centre, but Rago said it was decided to hold that every second year because it has grown to the point where it takes almost an entire year just to organize it.
“So this year we’re holding a mini-Stomp at our downtown [Edmonton] restaurant on April 29 … a sit-down dinner for 120 people.”
Along with other fundraising events during the month, a percentage of all food sales on Big Garlic Night, April 25, in all Sorrentino’s and Bistecca locations will go directly to Compassion House.
Corporate chef Sonny Sung and staff created this month’s garlic menu while focusing on Alberta produced products such as sausage from Mundare, pork from Sturgeon County and garlic from west of Edmonton and Claresholm.
