Never on Monday: Weekends Only

When the seven-year-old West Hollywood restaurant El Morocco closed its doors at the end of last year, I had the abandonment blues. How to live without its garlicky eggplant, its spicy carrot salad, its steaming, anise-perfumed bread? And where to go to be treated like a member of the family ( everyone was treated as family) and eat an aphrodisiacal feast?

Well, boy, oh boy: Moroccan-born Haim Edery can’t stay out of the kitchen, and his native-Angeleno wife, Cathy, can’t stand life without guests. So they’ve just started Weekends Only, a catering service so lovingly run you’d swear the Ederys were doing penance for eating too much baklava in a former life.

Although there are rules (which I’ll get to in a minute), Weekends Only’s password is not simply “personal touch.” It’s personal embrace. Haim has a disposition for making extravagant quantities, and Cathy, who often delivers the meal, hovers around to make sure her instructions-for-warming are clear. “They want something special?” she says. “They have to have it during the week? Tell them to call me. We’ll talk.”

But the rules first. For $20 per person (there’s a 10-person minimum) you get a Moroccan/Mediterranean banquet complete with six salads that would make Matisse weep, an astonishing supply of one main course, a mountain of vegetable couscous and heaps of Haim’s hallah -esque bread. For another $5 per person, a giant bastilla is added to the order.

While I suppose one could haggle for a double order of zingy chile-suffused carrot salad in exchange for the crunchy, lightly marinated beets tossed with cumin and cilantro, covet more rich, silky eggplant with garlic and tomatoes, pine for more wonderful densely green chard and cumin salad, or trade the lightly vinegared bell peppers for even more of the crisp kirby cucumbers, the set of six salads is swell as is.

“Cigars,” thin flaky tubes of ready-to-fry dough wrapped around finely beef--or fish--flavored with ground cumin and peppery harissa , are available a la carte. They’re a wonderful mix of the crunchy and the smooth, cost $20 for 20 servings, and take about four minutes to cook. The potato-and-egg souffle, available for $20, is like a savory tamagoyaki studded with carrots, potatoes and peas. But unless you can talk Haim into going easier on the salt, I’d skip it.

The bastilla can be ordered a la carte, too. (A $25 pie will serve 10.) Its thin, buttery filo layers, ready to bake, are stuffed with a lavish mix of tenderly cooked chicken, ground almonds and eggs. You want sensuous food? Dig in--and eat it with your hands.

I’ve tasted many of Haim’s entrees throughout the years, and I think the only problem with their take-out trade is that customers have to decide on one dish. (It’s too labor-intensive otherwise, he says.) How to choose between the sultry lamb with dried apricots and prunes, walnuts, cashews and honey, and the smooth chicken with garlic, preserved lemons and cracked green olives? Or between the lean, cumin-rich merguez sausages and the sardines with fresh tomatoes? Read the menu (“apricots filled with beef dipped in honey and crushed almonds . . .”) and cry.

All the dishes that need to be heated come in sturdy aluminum containers along with instructions. The vegetable couscous arrives in three parts--chunkily cut, turmeric-stained vegetables; a pot of the thick, actually not too-blazing red pepper sauce, harissa, and the distinct pearly grains. All you need is a big oven, a harem of platters and a plan to walk it all off the next day. (Cathy Edery is “thinking about” being available to take care of all party details. Talk to her.)

While Haim home-bakes fine renditions of the heady pastries one encounters in North Africa and the Middle East, no one I know ever has room for another bite after one of his meals. Last week, when beautiful downtown Burbank was feeling more like beautiful downtown Fez, our well-stuffed party picked at raspberries, drank black coffee and howled at the moon.

Weekends Only, (213) 656-9180. Catering available Fridays-Sundays. Personal checks and cash only; no credit cards. 50% deposit requested when placing order. Order one week ahead, two weeks for parties of more than 20 persons. Free delivery to Beverly Hills, W.Hollywood, Hollywood.