Celebrating Seder Away From Home in a Restaurant

“Why is this night different from all other nights?” Well, for one thing, because we’re spending it in a restaurant.

Seder, the meal that celebrates Passover, is a festive ritual that has traditionally been eaten at home. The Last Supper was a Seder, and Jesus certainly didn’t eat it in a restaurant. But then he didn’t live in Los Angeles, where the restaurant Seder is becoming increasingly common.

The Rangoon Racquet Club in Beverly Hills, for instance, will host what is described as “a very proper, though not kosher, traditional evening,” in honor of Passover on April 19. The Seder supper will include Seder Plates, matzos and kosher wines, as well as such dishes as curly chicory salad with smoked salmon, supreme of chicken Eliat and honey chiffon cake. The multicourse meal is $45 per person, including wine.

Spago will repeat its now annual Passover Seder on April 20, beginning at sundown. The Seder ceremony, like the food, is what Wolfgang Puck describes as “traditional with a contemporary twist.” The restaurant even makes its own matzos for the occasion. The price per head is $100, with proceeds going to Mazon, which raises money in the Jewish community and awards grants to international hunger relief organizations, regardless of denomination.

Il Giardino in Beverly Hills features authentic Passover recipes from Italy at its Seder dinner, beginning at 5 p.m. April 19. The dinner is $30 per person, and the restaurant’s regular menu will also be available.

Prego, also in Beverly Hills, and Trattoria Angeli in West Los Angeles will offer Italian-style Seder dinners, too. (Cafe Angeli in Hollywood will offer some special Seder dishes.) Neither had announced menu details or prices at press time. (Prego in Irvine plans no Seder.)

El Koutoubia in West L.A. will be closed April 19 and 20 in observance of Passover, but will prepare and package traditional Moroccan-style Sephardic dinners to go, available until 5 p.m. April 19. The dinners, which are kosher, include assorted salads, a soup of fava beans and potatoes flavored with cilantro and saffron, fresh fish with bell peppers, and a choice of beef meatballs with green beans, lamb with prunes and honey, or chicken with saffron sauce. The price is $25-$35 per dinner, depending on the main course, and free delivery is available in the immediate neighborhood.

BAKING AND BOWLING: Camelions in Santa Monica now has a bread-maker in residence. Straight from France, her name is Maite Lombard and she hails from Meounes-les-Montrieux (about 35 miles east of Marseilles in Provence). Lombard owns four bakeries in and around that town, and at Camelions she is currently turning out not only authentic French-style baguettes, but also olive bread, walnut bread, and other regional specialties. Camelions proprietor Marsha Sands notes that Lombard is also the local petanque (Provencal bowling) champion in Meounes.

BAKER’S TREAT REGULARS: And speaking of bakers, Marion Cunningham, noted author and cooking teacher whose “The Breakfast Book” (published last year by Knopf) was one of the cookbook hits of the season, has formed a group of professional bakers called the Baker’s Dozen. “Surprisingly, there are a lot of mysteries involved in baking,” Cunningham says, “and a lot of questions about the subject have gone unanswered for too long.” Her group aims to help solve some of those mysteries and answer some of those questions. Members can discuss concerns of the baker’s trade, share information about ingredients and equipment, and catalogue job opportunities in the field. The group held its first meeting in San Francisco two weeks ago.

Now, Los Angeles baker Amy Pressman (she provides breads and pastries for the Rose Cafe in Venice, among other places) is organizing a Southern California chapter of the group. Anyone who bakes for a living and who, in Cunningham’s words, “shares the same general goals and high standards” as founding members of the Baker’s Dozen, may call Pressman at (213) 396-2362 for more information.

WHAT’S GOING ON: Hors d’oeuvres and a seven-course feast, accompanied by wines from Clos du Bois, will be featured at John Dominis in Newport Beach on Tuesday, also at 7 p.m., for $65 per person. . . . It’s Grgich Hills wines and a five-course meal for $70 per person April 10 at Cafe Pierre in Manhattan Beach. . . . Also on April 10, Patout’s Louisiana Restaurant in West L.A. begins its first annual Crawfish Festival. Highlights of the festival will include a crawfish eating contest, a crawfish cooking class and on April 11 a six-course mostly-crawfish dinner with more of those Clos du Bois wines. The price is $55 per crawfish-eater.