Italian restaurants Piccola Bussola and La Bussola hosting Passover seder

If you’re driving by Piccola Bussola in Huntington on Sunday, don’t be surprised to hear the strains of Passover songs emanating from the big tent adjacent to the restaurant: This will be the fifth year that the family-style Italian restaurant holds a communal seder.

"It’s the coolest thing — hundreds of people in an Italian restaurant singing "Dayenu" at the top of their lungs," said Tony Lubrano, who owns Piccola Bussola and La Bussola in Glen Cove along with his brothers, Carlo, John and Marco.

The tradition started in 2009 at Piccola Bussola in Mineola, and endured until that restaurant was destroyed by fire 11 years later. Lubrano recounted that one of the restaurant’s regular customers asked if he could rent the party room for an evening in the spring. Certainly, said Lubrano, assuming that the party of 40 would order off the regular menu. But a few weeks before the agreed-upon date, the customer announced that he wanted potato latkes, chopped liver, gefilte fish, matzo ball soup and brisket — the party was a family seder.

"We don’t make any of that," Lubrano countered. "We’re an Italian restaurant."

All four Lubrano men grew up in the restaurant business, first helping their father, Pasquale, at La Bussola (est. 1980) and then going on to open Piccola Bussola in Huntington (1993) and Mineola (2003). They take Italian food very seriously, but hospitality even more seriously. Tony, whose wife, Nancy, is Jewish and whose children had all been bar or bat mitzvahed, decided he was up for the challenge.

In the weeks leading up to Passover 2009, he spent so much time in the kitchen that customers started to ask their servers, "Where’s Tony?" When they learned that he was in the kitchen rendering schmaltz and forming knaidlach, Jewish patrons asked if they could have their Passover seders in the main dining room.

Nancy’s rabbi, Michael S. Churgel, supplied the Haggadot and the evening was a success. Word got out and the following year, an additional 100 customers requested the Passover seder. By 2012, Piccola Bussola had purchased dozens of seder plates and was producing its own Haggadah, edited by Nancy. Nancy also leads the seder, roving from table to table with a cordless microphone so that every group has a chance to participate.

In 2020, there was no seder — Passover came less than a month into the pandemic shutdown. Later that year, Mineola burned down, and 2021 passed with no seder either. But in 2022, Lubrano brought the tradition to Huntington. The huge post-pandemic tent outside could accommodate 100 celebrants and, within a year, demand exceeded tent capacity and the restaurant began booking seder tables in the main dining room. The seder plate, Haggadah and menu were exactly the same but, since Nancy was in the tent, indoor groups needed to lead their own seders.

That was the way it was for the next three years but, this year, Tony convinced his brothers to do a seder at La Bussola in Glen Cove.

Both restaurants will serve the same menu: chopped liver (enlivened by cayenne and thyme), latkes with applesauce (which are also served as an amuse-bouche during Hanukkah), mini franks (sans blankets) with mustard, gefilte fish (with an untraditional but delicious cold broccoli salad), brisket (whose gravy gets a tart zetz from orange juice), sautéed carrots, roast potatoes and, because this is an Italian restaurant after all, chicken scarpariello. For dessert: flourless chocolate cake and the caramelized matzo enrobed in chocolate. To drink: Wine (nonkosher wine) Kedem grape juice and soft drinks.

Tony Lubrano, who wears a matzo-print tie for the festivities, made it clear that his is not a seder for observant Jews. "We are not a kosher restaurant," he said. "The customers who come for Passover are not strictly religious. He remembered that first year when his son, Pasquale, was the only minor in the room who could recite the Four Questions in Hebrew.

The price is $65.95 a person, $27 ages 12 and younger. Seats are limited and reservations are required. Piccola Bussola, 970 W. Jericho Tpke., Huntington, 631-692-6300, piccolabussolarestaurant.com; 40 School St., Glen Cove, 516-671-2100, labussolaristorante.com