HANUKKAH TABLE: SEPHARDIC TREATS (Published 1984) (2024)

THE idea of Hanukkah without latkes would be as unacceptable to many Jews as a bagel without lox. Latkes, or potato pancakes, have long been considered a traditional part of the holiday celebration.

Yet it is not the latkes but the oil in which they are fried that symbolizes the occasion. It commemorates the miracle of the temple lamp that burned for eight days on a day's worth of oil after Judas Maccabeus's victory over King Antiochus of Syria in 165 B.C. Thus it is that the holiday, which this year begins on the evening of Dec. 18, lasts eight days.

Only the Jews of Eastern European or Ashkenazi origin insist that the food prepared in the oil be latkes. Among Sephardic Jews, who settled throughout the Middle East, North Africa and southern Europe after the Diaspora, various dishes are deep-fried. The fritters called bimuelos are their typical Hanukkah treat, the name deriving from the Spanish for fritters, bunuelos.

Bimuelos are being served this Hanukkah at Andree's Mediterranean, a restaurant on East 74th Street in Manhattan that is owned by Andree Levy Abramoff. The pastries, which Mrs. Abramoff called zalabia, are part of the restaurant's special menu, which will be available in addition to the regular menu on the first night of the holiday.

Mrs. Abramoff was born in Egypt, so it is her recollections of festive Hanukkah meals when she was a child in Cairo that became the basis of her restaurant's Hanukkah offering.

She noted, for example, that in Cairo the dinner would include five or six courses. ''We would start with fish, usually fishballs like quenelles that were first deep-fried, then simmered in tomato sauce,'' she said. ''They were made with salt cod.'' The fish was followed by whole artichokes, prepared in oil and very spicy, a roast with peas and a pilaf, and desserts.