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Food coverage is supported by a generous donation from Susan and Moses Libitzky.

In December, Leya Aronoff attended the first in a series of monthly Sephardic Shabbat dinners at Congregation Anshey Sfard in San Francisco’s Richmond District. About 50 people showed up.

“What struck me immediately about it was the food,” recalled Aronoff, a resident of Moishe House SF–Nob Hill. “There was so much of it, and it immediately reminded me of my Tunisian grandmother’s cooking. You don’t come across that kind of food very often in San Francisco.”

Apparently, she’s not the only one who felt that way.

Fast-forward to today. A number of Bay Area young adult organizations have become partners in the monthly Shabbat dinner. And Aronoff is now working part time for Anshey Sfard to help expand its young adults program.

At the most recent Sephardic Shabbat dinner on Sept. 6, 150 people crammed into the synagogue’s social hall. It was hard to move between tables. They had to close online registration early and turn people away at the door for lack of space.

The main dishes included chicken meatballs, beef meatballs, schnitzel, marinated chicken and salmon. There was hummus, baba ghanoush, fried eggplant, Moroccan carrot salad, the spicy Yemenite condiment z’hug, borekas, potatoes, rice and steamed asparagus.

And just as abundant was the alcohol. 

The $36 ticket includes an open bar on the patio, where participants mingle before and during the Kabbalat Shabbat service, and continue to refill their glasses during dinner — that is, if they can navigate the packed room to reach the bar.

Anshey Sfard Rabbi Avigdor Ashtar also walks around with a bottle of arak, the Middle Eastern spirit that tastes like anise, and a sleeve of tiny plastic shot glasses, offering “l’chaims” to anyone who wants to partake.

(The emphasis on alcohol consumption is not subtle, so I was amused to see on one wall in the social hall — below paintings of three rabbis — a sign with red letters in all-caps saying “Drink in Moderation.”)

While the email promoting the dinners said they are cooked by a “Michelin-starred chef,” neither Aronoff nor Simon Barzilay, the chef, knew how that descriptor ended up in his bio. Barzilay isn’t a professional chef, so he’s amused to hear that he was given such an accolade.

His main concern for the September meal was that he had to share the tiny kitchen with a group of people cooking for a Shabbat lunch the following day. 

He’s also always hoping that Friday night services won’t run too long because all of the cooking must be done by sundown. (It’s a traditional community, after all.) He knows as well as anyone what happens to food that sits in chafing dishes too long, especially fish. But the care he puts into the food isn’t in question. He makes nearly everything himself. He even made his own dough for the borekas until the guest count grew too large.

“I try to talk to the rabbi about it,” he said about the length of services. “I want everything to be fresh.”

Barzilay, whose parents are from Morocco, moved to the U.S. from Israel in 1983, following a childhood friend to Bakersfield. Barzilay was an entrepreneur and, at one time, owned a restaurant and a nightclub, he said.

Growing up, Barzilay wasn’t allowed in his family’s kitchen; his mother considered it her domain. But living abroad, he missed the tastes of Moroccan and Israeli food and, over time, taught himself to cook.

He’s been in San Francisco since 1991 and now works as an art dealer. A longtime member of the Sephardic congregation, he began hosting holiday meals for his friends. When word spread about his food, he began cooking small holiday meals for synagogue members.

When he first began volunteering to cook the Sephardic Shabbat dinners, he was preparing all the food himself. Now several other volunteers and a paid cleaner help him.

He considers meatballs his specialty. If he were to ever open another restaurant, he said, he’d do a meatball concept.

“I used to call my mom and ask for her recipes,” he said. “I’d go home to Israel and watch her. They’re not exactly how she did it, but close.”

Anshey Sfard President Isaac Shabtai told me that like a number of the Bay Area’s smaller synagogues, his has an aging membership, and its leaders know they need to draw in younger members to thrive. So far, the mantra “if you feed them, they will come” is a huge success. The Sephardic Shabbat dinner now draws regulars, as well as more and more newcomers. The organizers are considering putting more diners beneath a tent on the patio.

They’re also in discussion about what else they can offer to further engage this new community, Aronoff said.

Barzilay is happy to pitch in. 

“I do it all to help the synagogue,” he said. “It’s great to see so many people coming together over my food.”

The only item that he didn’t make himself at the September meal was one dessert item. Small cups of malabi, an Arabic rosewater pudding, came from Hummus Bodega. But Barzilay made the baklava.

I slipped out after dinner while the rabbi was belting out a spirited version of “Adon Haslichot” from the High Holiday liturgy — “We have sinned before you, have mercy on us” — while pouring the remains of an arak bottle into the mouth of a synagogue elder. Never before had I seen or heard a melody I recognized from High Holiday liturgy used as a drinking song. 

When I left, Barzilay was sitting with his friends at the one table with a few of the shul’s longtime members (and the only people in the room over 40). He had started cooking that day at 6 a.m., he told me, and was now partaking in his food, wine and arak, exhausted after a long day’s effort.

Other co-sponsors of the dinner included Adam Swig’s Value Culture, Malka Productions, Moishe Houses in Nob Hill and Silicon Valley, SFBadJews, Jewbilee SF and JIMENA. The next dinner is set for Oct. 4. When registration opens, you can sign up at ansheysfard.com/young-professionals.