Spazzo Cooks Up Fun Along With Fine Food

Spazzo, 10655 N.E. Fourth St., Bellevue. 454-8255. Lunch and dinner daily. Lunch reservations recommended; dinner first-come first-served. Major credit cards. Take-out service. Full bar. ---------------------------------------------------------------

Want to have some good, clean fun? Ready for a hot and hearty meal, creatively cooked and complete with all the embellishments of a fine dinner on the town?

Well, if you've got some spare cash set aside, you might want to try lunch or dinner at Spazzo Mediterranean Grill, the newest incarnation of Schwartz Brothers' top-of-the-town Bellevue eatery formerly known as Benjamin's.

They've given the place a serious face lift. Besides renaming it, they added plenty of color and light. As soon as you step off the elevator, you are greeted by bright pastels and a cheery new decor. The Bellevue and Seattle skylines, and the Olympics beyond, create stupendous natural murals along the glass walls.

The staff is quintessentially informal. Waiters and waitresses wear jeans and street clothes and greet customers with expressions like "Loosen your tie," and "Relax and have fun."

One element of Spazzo's decor is the "cooking bar," the dinner counter where patrons can watch their food being prepared. It's one part of the old Benjamin's that Schwartz Brothers kept.

All of the restaurant's meals are cooked in plain view. Diners can be entertained by the full complement of chefs whipping up

everything from salads and creative appetizers to a fine selection of desserts.

For those who enjoy wine with dinner, Spazzo has a huge selection that includes Northwest and California wines (from $10.95 a bottle) as well as a mix of Italian, French, Greek and Spanish wines (from $13.95). It even offers an Israeli red wine called Gamla (1988; $25.50).

Chef Bruce Dillon has added an all-new menu for Spazzo to accompany the new image. The menu is heavily influenced by cuisines from Spain, Greece and the Middle East, with a bit of the old Pacific Northwest thrown in for good measure.

An interesting (though by no means new) twist on the trend toward lower restaurant prices is Spazzo's introduction of tapas, or Spanish appetizers.

Our waiter even suggested we order entirely off the tapas menu, rather than the generally higher-priced dinner menu, to keep control of our tab.

Most of the food is outstanding. Some of the items on the menu, sampled in two visits to Spazzo, were truly exciting. For instance, the grilled calamari ($5.75) is served with a spicy Portugese concoction called a "piri-piri" sauce - a mix of chili oil, garlic and pepper. Saganaki, or fried Greek cheese ($4.95), is served in a nontraditional way - flamed with ouzo instead of Metaxa. The only drawback, according to our waiter, is that ouzo does not create quite as explosive a show as the Greek brandy.

The "Quartet of Med Spread" ($6.50) is worth a try for those with an experimental bent. Spazzo added tyrosalata, a whipped feta, to the plate, a novel way of handling the popular cheese made of goat's milk.

Eating at Spazzo can be a fun, hands-on experience. The Caesar salad (small, $4.95; large, $6.95) is served in the traditional way - full leaves of romaine lettuce to be eaten by hand. There are warm towels for cleanup.

A few of the items, however, seemed overpriced for the amount and quality presented. Some diners criticized Spazzo's paella, the traditional Spanish rice casserole containing chicken, sausage, crab and other shellfish, vegetables and spices. Usually cooked with the rice stewed in broth, Spazzo simply threw in pre-cooked white rice, resulting in a shallow-flavored replica of the real thing. At $13.95 per person at dinner (available in quantities for more than one), it seemed far too expensive.

Spazzo is not Benjamin's. And it's a lot of fun. Just don't expect tradition. They've made a few changes.