A small group of diners gathered at the Portage du Fort municipal hall for a “spaghetti supper with a twist” on Saturday evening, organized by the town’s mayor Lynne Cameron as well as Portage resident Lise McCorriston as a fundraiser for a chair lift for the building.

To kick off the night, patrons were served wine and invited to peruse the menu, which listed all 15 components of the dinner – everything from the entrees and sides to the cutlery and dishware needed to enjoy them. The twist? Every menu item was written in Latin.

Diners were then asked to organize the components into three different courses, structuring how their meal would arrive.

Whether their dessert arrived before their spaghetti supper, or their cutlery before their salad, all depended on how well they knew their Latin.

“If the dessert looks good, you’ll find a way to eat it,” Cameron joked, assuring nobody would leave the supper hungry.

Darell McCorriston was the waiter for the evening. Dressed in black and white, he poured wine, delivered the courses, and explained the rules to rightly confused guests.

During the first course, many had not been lucky enough to choose a fork, so when their food came out, people got creative.

Some who got salads were eating with spoons and toothpicks.

Cameron said she went to a similar event in Renfrew and decided to bring one to Portage as part of the ongoing fundraising efforts to increase the accessibility of the hall.

Currently, the only way to get to the entertainment space on the upper level of the building is by a steep set of stairs.

The stairs are not wide enough to facilitate a platform lift, but a chair lift is feasible. The price tag for a chair lift, as of right now, is $25,000.