Inforzato's Italian Cafe Turning misfortune into tasty pasta

Small misfortunes trigger big realizations -- break a plate on the kitchen floor, and you may suddenly remember how much you loved the girl you bought it with...during yet another weekend spent antiquing...in Wylie. Man that chick was a waste of time. Realizing the past was delicious: the couple behind Inforzato's Italian Café.

This cozy, memento-strewn 35-seater was born when a burst water pipe prompted the owners of the then Hula Hotties to reconsider direction and resurrect the wife's family legacy: a same-named Duluth, MN spot open from 1914 (when it featured special booths for barstool-banned women) to 1978 -- during which time her dad won a WWII Purple Heart, and her uncle quit the Golden Gophers football team to also enlist, only to have them win a nat'l championship the next year. And there's also food! Decades-old recipes start with apps like breaded & fried crab-stuffed artichokes, antipasto skewers w/ deli meats and cheeses, stuffed green olives, pepperoncini & roasted peppers, and fried ravioli with Grandma Dora's sauce (Supercool! Exploradora that sauce!). Mains run from tilapia lemon piccata (breaded & sautéed, served w/ veggies and lemon fettuccini alfredo), to Ruggiero's Muffaletta (an original c. 1914 olive mix, capicola, Genoa salami, ham, mortadella, and provolone), to a sausage, sun-dried tomato, and lemon aioli burger called "Cousin Kyle's Hot Dago", for which everyone volunteered to be the guinea pig?

Desserts'll get you sweet potato pecan pie, ricotta, butterscotch, or banana creme canolis, and soon-to-be-legendary sticky buns. They also still do Hawaiian catering -- take down a luau-worthy spread, and you'll get so not-small, everyone will consider you a waste of time.