A PASSOVER WITH PAISANO OVERTONES

Why is this seder different from all other seders? Well, for one thing, the bitter herbs are arugula.

But that comes later. The second annual seder at Spago starts with--what else?--a seating crisis. Nobody is happy with his placement. “The maitre d’ doesn’t understand how we’re built,” complains one guest. “He thinks we’re like those skinny stars. You just can’t fit as many of us at one table.” There is a a lot of grousing and maneuvering and shuffling of chairs before the meal can even begin. “All over America people in Jewish homes are complaining about their seats. So why should this be special,” my neighbor whispers, “just because it’s Spago?”

In fact, the most surprising thing about the Spago seder is how remarkably it resembles the real thing. In spite of its Italian name, Austrian owner and reputation for pizza, going to Spago for Passover turns out to be a lot like going to your grandmother’s. Even the vegetables are overcooked.

The service is too long, the kids get restless, and when the cantor who is leading the service says, “Repeat after me,” most of the adults can’t find the place in the book. By the time he says, “Drink the first glass of wine,” most people are already on their fifth, and when we are finally up to the part about the matzos, most of them have already been eaten. (Homemade matzos baked in a wood-burning pizza oven can be wickedly good.) And long before we are down to the actual eating, everybody is starving; when the time comes to taste the bitter herbs, everybody eats the arugula with unseemly glee.

Of course the main meal finally comes, and then the very same refrain that is repeated in private homes all over America can be heard echoing up and down the room; “This is the best gefilte fish I’ve ever tasted,” the guests chorus. The difference is that this time it’s true. The airy little puffs of fish are light and fluffy and absolutely delicious. They are served with two kinds of horseradish. One is white and strong and bitter--the way horseradish should be. It makes you cry. The other is red and weak and pretty tame. It is, I swear, mixed with olive oil. “What do Italians know from horseradish?” murmurs my neighbor.

There is matzo ball soup, of course, which isn’t bad (personally I’ve had better). Then we get--are you ready for this-- latkes with foie gras. “I guess Wolf thought it was sort of like chopped liver,” mumbles the woman to my right. To tell the truth it tastes pretty good.

There’s more of course, lot’s more. This is, after all, the last supper. So we have salmon, beautiful salmon with pine nuts in a vinaigrette, and heaps and heaps of beef. And then, those vegetables. This may be Spago’s first attempt at overcooked vegetables, but I’m here to tell you that they don’t taste any better served on Villeroy & Boch than they do on ordinary plates.

There is endless pouring of Kosher wine (Hagafen), and then great platters of dessert. And then the cantor takes up the service again. Afterward, he just can’t help himself. Who can blame him? He looks out at that roomful of stars and directors and casting agents, and he segues out of Dyanu and right into “Start spreading the news. . . . “

If you find all this surprising, you will be startled to learn that Spago was not alone. Two other Italian restaurants served special meals in honor of Passover--only they did it in quite a different spirit.

At Prego a special dish was served each day during the week of Passover. One day it was chicken stuffed with matzo meal, another it was baby kid in a sauce of lemon and egg. On the day that I was there, the special dish was a risotto made of artichokes. It wasn’t bad, but as I looked across the table at the pizza and the pasta and the roast chicken, I couldn’t help wondering why this dish was different than any other dish.

Angeli went considerably further; during the week of Passover they served a special prix fixe dinner. These dishes, culled from the recipes of Italian Jewish families, were light, spicy and absolutely seductive; they offered an entirely new perspective on what we think of as Jewish food.

The meal began with haroset, a rich mixture of raisins, dates and oranges that resembled nothing I’ve ever eaten before. It was served with piles of lettuce leaves to scoop the mixture up. The flavor was so vivid that as I ate the colors of Oriental carpets went flashing behind my eyelids.

Next came a plate of antipasti crowned with an egg glowing a dense, deep red. It looked as if the color went through the shell and into the egg itself. “We got that color by boiling the eggs with onion skins,” says owner Evan Kleiman. Surrounding the eggs were carciofi alla giudea, deep-fried arti chokes, their leaves as crisp and fine as parchment, their hearts like little treasures you discover only at the end. There was also sweet and sour celery root, and caponata, a pungent mixture of eggplant, peppers and capers.

The $21 meal offered a choice of impressive main courses. No big haunches of meat here, no legs of lamb. There was steamed filet of sole, the flesh soft and perfumed with lemon, the flavor punctuated by parsley and black olives. The chicken was even better; it was, in fact, the best fried chicken I have ever tasted. The birds had been marinated with cinnamon, lemon, garlic and pepper before being dipped in batter and quickly fried. The spices gave this normally plebeian dish a kind of elegance. There was also something called mina, a sort of meat loaf of mint and lamb baked in a matzo crust; it tasted like a slightly stately moussaka.

The meal concluded with tishpishti, honey-soaked almond cake that seemed like the perfect conclusion to this exotic dinner. It was, all told, an extraordinary meal.

I find this whole phenomenon, in fact, quite extraordinary. Where else but in Los Angeles would you find Italian restaurants celebrating Passover in such style? Who knows what surprises lie in store--Pesach in Peruvian places, seder in Sichuan? The way things are going, people may soon be saying, “Next year at the Mandarin.”