Maggie’s Pennsylvania Munch, Plus

I’ve been out nibbling at inexpensive neighborhood eateries again, and as usual have had some great things to eat. Let’s hope the people who write the Neighborhood Eatery columns aren’t too upset that I’ve stepped into their territory.

Maggie’s Cafe and Bakery is exactly like a truck stop you’d stumble on someplace like York, Penn. It’s not so much because of the ‘50s-style counter, the tall, comfy booths or even the smartly painted Pennsylvania Dutch hex-marks that owner Dan Christ, an amateur hexologist, has put on the walls.

No, it’s rather more because Dan’s wife, Maggie, another Pennsylvania native, serves dishes such as homemade scrapple and a traditional shoofly pie on her all-American menu. You’d be hard-pressed to find these dishes elsewhere in these parts.

Scrapple is a dish that can be eaten for breakfast, lunch or dinner. It’s a flat, fried cornmeal cake with ground pork and spices mixed into the batter. Keystone State natives eat it with butter and syrup at breakfast, plain and cold for lunch and hot with creamed horseradish at dinner time. It’s uncompromisingly heavy fare with strong flavors, and even the movie “Witness” couldn’t get me in the mood for a second helping.

Shoofly pie, though, is one of the great American desserts. Imagine a pecan pie flavored with blackstrap molasses, covered with a crumb topping and thick whipped cream; to turn that into shoofly pie, leave the pecans out. And it’s just one of the great cakes and pies for sale here (try the delicious chocolate cake, among the best around).

But there’s lots more to eat here, solid, stick-to-the-ribs fare at coffee shop prices: a good, crumbly meat loaf; hand-trimmed, thinly sliced beef brisket with a thick brown gravy on top; fresh roast turkey with bread crumb and celery stuffing; great mashed potatoes.

In the great American cafe tradition, service is indifferent until you become a regular. One visit here, though, and you’ll probably be on your way to being one.

Several weeks ago, I mistakenly reported that Anaheim’s Ararad was the only Armenian restaurant in Orange County. Armenian Garden Cuisine in Garden Grove is really sort of a food stand with tables, but the food is so good that the place deserves some respect.

You’ll find it just north of Mile Square Park on a quiet stretch of Ward Street, and you’ll have to look hard because it’s set back a little from the road. You’ll sit on a makeshift patio, protected from the elements by a corrugated metal roof. You order dishes from the kitchen window, and they’re brought to your table.

And what dishes they are. Armenian Garden Cuisine presents your basic Lebanese/Armenian menu--falafel, meechoog kuefteh, stuffed grape leaves and various kebabs, all served with purple-colored pickled turnips, a chopped lettuce salad, fluffy mounds of rice pilaf and a basket of steaming hot pita bread. Everything is wonderful.

The falafel, here made with garbanzos mixed with sesame seeds and spices, is served sandwich-style, the fried bean balls in pita bread with tahineh sauce. Meechoog kuefteh are as heavy as the falafel are light: oil-rich spheroids of cracked wheat filled with ground beef and pine nuts.

The kebabs are made with chicken, lamb or ground beef (the lula kebab, heavily seasoned ground beef, a bit overboard with cumin), served well-done on wooden skewers with a home-style flavor you don’t normally expect outside a private home. And the homemade pastries are wonderful, especially ghurebiya , a sort of shortbread dusted with confectioner’s sugar and incredible pistachio baklava. Wash it all down with a muddy cup of soorj , bittersweet Armenian coffee.

Santa Ana’s First Street is home to dozens of storefront ethnic restaurants. One of the best is El Pollo Ricky, a Peruvian counter place that specializes in pollo a la brasa , rotisserie chicken. It’s in Rona Plaza, a super mini-mall also home to a Viva supermarket and a Jugos Acapulco, a tropical fruit drink palace. You won’t leave hungry.

Forget glamour. You sit at booths of curved-back particle board, look at six or seven posters and listen to loud Peruvian music while you eat. Ricky is Ricky Benites, who runs the business along with brother Isidro. Wife Aurelia is a stalwart behind the counter, taking the orders and bringing them to your table.

The menu is full of classic Peruvian dishes such as ceviche--now made everywhere, but Peruvian in origin. Ricky’s ceviche mixto is a triumph of marinated raw snapper, squid, octopus and shrimp, served with plenty of salsa criolla (vinegared onions, parsley and chopped tomato). Ricky makes a hearty cornmeal tamale stuffed with chicken, a cooked egg and olive, making it more substantial than its cousins in Central America or Mexico. Chaufas is now part of Peruvian cuisine, but the dish was introduced to Peru by the country’s many Chinese restaurants--the name is a version of chow fun , or fried noodles.

Papas a la Huancaina --literally, potatoes cooked in the style of the city of Huancayo--is a classic dish from northern Peru. It’s whole boiled potatoes blanketed in a rich sauce of cheese, cream, chilies and olive oil. Aurelia says this is her most popular dish after the roast chicken.

But it is the chicken that most people come for, available in quarters, halves or wholes and served with good french fries (Peru also gave the world the potato), plus a green salad. This is not a particularly crisp chicken, but a complex, garlic-infused marinade makes it a standout. Aji , Peru’s omnipresent green garlic salsa, is served alongside, this one a suspension thickened with mustard and mayonnaise.

If you are still hungry for authenticity, have a chicha morada to drink. It’s an herb-flavored, purple-colored elixir made from corn. Few non-Peruvians make a habit of the stuff.

MAGGIE’S CAFE AND BAKERY

9575 Valley View St., Cypress.

(714) 527-1383.

Open daily, 24 hours.

MasterCard and Visa accepted.

ARMENIAN GARDEN CUISINE

15532 Ward St., Garden Grove.

(714) 775-4499.

Lunch and dinner Tuesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Closed Monday.

Cash only.

EL POLLO RICKY

2015 W. First St., Santa Ana.

(714) 667-0701.

Lunch and dinner daily, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Cash only.