Operators incorporate unique styles into Passover tributes

Nation's Restaurant News, April 17, 1989 by Ken Frydman

Operators incorporate unique styles into Passover tributes

The traditional Passover Seders this week will be celebrated not only in Jewish homes across America but in restaurants as well.

Restaurants observing the Hebrew holiday April 19 and 20 run from the expected to the unexpected -- a kosher restaurant in New York, a pair of Chicago hotels, one of Los Angeles' trendiest hangouts, a seasonal American cuisine place in Florida, and an elegant French bistro in Manhattan.

One operator is even jetting catered dinners to Soviet Union refuseniks.

Passover documents the Jews' biblical-era escape, or Exodus, from Egypt, where they had been forced to build the Pyramids for the pharaoh. The religious dinners feature foods symbolic of the Jews' plight before and during their flight through the desert.

Lou G. Siegel's, an Old-World-style kosher restaurant in Manhattan's garment district, expects to serve an average of 1,200 meals a day during the week-long Passover holiday, according to Myles Share, the restaurant's vice president. The 71-year-old operation will also deliver approximately 350 meals a day during the holy week to hotels, restaurants, and catering halls, Share added.

Most noteworthy, however, is Lou G. Siegel's plan to send 500 to 1,000 free Passover meals to the Jewish would-be emigrants, known as "Refuseniks."

The $10,000 contribution will include the Seder plate; gefilte fish; roasted chicken with a carrot, prune, and sweet potato compote; and baked Passover honey, sponge, and marble cakes, Share said.

"Aeroflot (the official Soviet airline) refused to cooperate with us, so we'll send the meals on a U.S. airline in dry ice that'll keep for 50 hours," Share explained.

Closer to home, the three Capsouto brothers will hold back-to-back kosher dairy Seders for the third consecutive year in Capsouto Freres, their 100-seat downtown Manhattan bistro.

The sold-out $65 per-person Capsouto Freres' Seders will be led by two different rabbis over two nights. "The first night will be strictly observant, and the second night will be looser," said co-owner Jacques Capsouto.

At the center of each Capsouto Freres' table will be the traditional Seder plate complete with a lamb bone, celery, parsley, salt water, a boiled egg, three pieces of matzoh (flat, unleavened bread), a radish or parsnip, and haroseth (a concoction of dates, apples, and nuts). Each of the items represents the sweetness and bitterness of biblical-era events.

The meal will begin with three types of frittatas -- leeks, zucchini, and

spinach -- followed by hearts of artichokes stewed in oil, lemon, and garlic; poached salmon, or bass with wet matzoh stuffed with potato and cheese filling; baked okra with tomato, onion, and garlic; string beans with tomatoes, garlic, and onions; fruit salad; macaroons and kosher petit fours. The entire feast will be washed down with a kosher French bordeaux wine.

Capsouto Freres will donate $15 to $20 of every meal to the Jewish Distribution Organization, which funds projects in Israel, according to Jacques Capsouto.

As part of its regional American cuisine menu for spring, Chef Allen's in Aventura, Fla., will serve a $35-per-person Passover dinner menu on April 20. The meal will range from an appetizer of red snapper gefilte fish with freshly grated horseradish to entree choices of matzoh pasta with asparagus and shiitake mushrooms; or roast game hen with rhubarb, tarragon, and Cabernet. Dessert will be chocolate silk with a macaroon crust.

In downtown Chicago the Hyatt Regency hotel's La Misada kosher restaurant will be closed from April 18 through 30 in observance of the Passover period. In order to have qualified as kosher during Passover, La Misada would have had to throw out its year-round silverware, china, pots, and pans four days before the holiday began.

But the hotel's 150-seat banquet facilities will host Seders on Wednesday and Thursday nights of Passover week.

The meals will feature roasted chicken or brisket with a brandy sauce; chicken and matzoh ball soup; a salad combination of gefilte fish on bibb and raddichio lettuce garnished with marinated vegetables; wet matzoh kugel balls; oven-browned sweet whipped potatoes; glazed carrots and zucchini; tomato Florentine; and desserts like fresh strawberry shortcake; or lemon mousse in chocolate-laced wine glasses topped with chocolate-dipped macaroons.

The Hyatt Regency's chicken meal will be $26 per person, the brisket meal $28 per-person and children eight years old or younger will pay half price, according to Anne Bernstein, the hotel's catering marketing director.

The sister Hyatt Regency hotel in Lincolnwood, Ill., will also serve traditional Seder meals, not kosher dinners, in its banquet facilities and fine-dining restaurant, T.J. Peppercorn, said Bernstein.

Better known for goat cheese pizza than matzoh balls, Spago chef-owner Wolfgang Puck will nonetheless prepare his own version of the Passover meal on April 20. Inspired seven years ago by Puck's wife, Barbara Lazaroff, the Spago Passover meal, like Capsouto Freres', benefits a Jewish charity. In this case it's the Los Angeles meals-on-wheels program called Mazon.