Pepto-BisMall : Food: Some tasty menu selections can be found at the county’s three major retail centers, but customers may have to shop around.

The gaily dressed girl was eager to catch the little bugger, whatever it was. Her gaily dressed co-worker had pointed it out with an unmistakable voice of fear, pointing down into the vat of boiling oil, saying: “There, that thing floating there. What is it?”

The “it” was bobbing near my corn dog, itself boiling to a golden brown beneath the white-bright lights and gay colors of Hot Dog On A Stick, just within the second-floor entrance of The Oaks, Thousand Oaks’ major shopping mall.

The more intrepid of the two servers reached beneath the fryer and came up with a pair of pliers. Swiftly she plunged their jaws into the roiling caldron and carefully trolled through the cooking oil for the--ahem, floater.

The shiny chrome tool (was it ever used on a bathroom fixture?) came within an inch of my dog. (No doubt germs would be killed in the boiling, but not without also killing the fiercest of appetites.)

There, she’s got it: a harmless little piece of corn bread that had dislodged from an earlier frying.

Within seconds the girl also snatched my dog from the oil, turned it right side up, sheathed its stick in paper, and presented it to me with care, as if extending a microphone to record my vapor-lock horror.

“There you are, sir,” she said gaily. “Lemonade?”

Indeed. Lemonade.

I’ll cross the tiny food court and instead console myself with a Mrs. Powell’s cinnamon roll, a culinary acre of dough and sugar capable of sending any metabolism reeling with pleasure before pushing it over the great glycemic cliff and into an abyss of carbo stultification.

To wrap things up, I’ll clamber on downstairs to J.G.’s Espresso bar and knock back, or try with a grimace to knock back, a cafe latte that is overly acidic and bitter, hardly the tonic necessary for a happy merge back onto the 101.

Oh, mall dining.

An oxymoron, you say?

Not true, despite the foibles wrought by cheerful but hapless high schoolers manning so many of the mall’s eateries. It is possible, in fact, to take a presentable meal at any one of Ventura County’s three major malls: fragrant cheese and chicken quesadillas at Maritere’s at the Buenaventura Mall in Ventura; imaginatively spiced multicolored fresh pappardelle at The Magic Pan at The Oaks; and abundant, deeply flavored fajitas at Yolie’s Mexican Cafe at The Esplanade in Oxnard. But it is difficult to consistently eat, or even snack, well.

You are, after all, shopping. And none of these malls--unlike the more upscale and trendy centers to the south of us, such as Santa Monica Place or Glendale Galleria--offers an array of dining options so compelling in their own right as to entice people to the mall first to eat and then, if inclined, to shop.

The result is thus a hodgepodge, mostly over-the-counter fast food mixed with over-the-counter snacks. Some establishments are familiar sights to the weary shopper, others unwittingly retro in appearance and menu, and yet others so luminous (read LOUD) in their facades as to seem straight from the grand concourse of the county fair.

Take The Oaks: Orange Julius. Best Chinese. McDonald’s. Yogurt Connection. Sweeney’s. Carl’s Jr. Taco Bell. Cafe California. Mrs. Field’s Cookies. The list climbs to 20 in all.

Or The Esplanade: Swensen’s. Oyster Bay. Tony’s Pizza. Pretzels ‘N Things. Tokyo Teriyaki. New China.

Or Buenaventura: Creative Croissants. Chinese Combo King. Sbarro. Fosters Junior Freeze. Hot Sam. Corn Dog. A&W; Hot Dogs.

It wasn’t planned this way, exactly.

It came out this way most of all because of mall age. Ventura County’s malls were built before 1980, when mall dining was a very low priority among mall developers. As a result, large and appealing food courts were not designed into Ventura County malls, leaving their management in the 1980s in a game of catch-up in turning over space to food purveyors who might contribute to a more appealing array of choices.

But that’s easier said than done.

“We’ve got limited seating because our food area wasn’t really designed as a food court,” says Pam Hartwell, manager of The Esplanade. “And so it’s difficult to get the (food) tenants you want.” This, despite the fact that 6,000 people pour through the place on an average weekday--a modest number by mall standards but a volume of paying customers that merchants in our atrophied, off-the-highway town centers would envy on any day of the week. Still, you have to have the right space and facilities to make it work, to make it pay.

Hartwell used to work at Glendale’s Galleria, whose restaurants are so varied and good that it draws a non-shopping lunchtime business crowd. She is acutely aware of The Esplanade’s food limits. “It’s not that we’re not doing well--we are. We’re simply not meeting our customers’ expectations,” she says. “Right now, and we’re working to change this, we don’t really have the variety.”

Without major reconstruction, it’s a tricky undertaking. In addition to a common seating area, highly expensive utilities, venting, and plumbing are required by most restaurants; these utilities are centralized by architects of new malls into food courts serving numerous food tenants. In existing space, such as The Esplanade’s, only a very few storefronts lend themselves to restaurant use. Right now, one restaurant space is available in the food area; most current purveyors enjoy many more years on their leases, so changes will be slow to come.

Steve Rausch is a leasing specialist for MaceRich, the Santa Monica firm that owns Ventura’s Buenaventura Mall. He faces similar constraints, even though the mall this year will begin a huge expansion comprising three new anchor stores. Like Hartwell, Rausch cites variety as important and even invokes a sort of formula that drives management’s dining choices.

“No matter if the mall is new or old,” he says, “we set out to find a very good pizza guy, a hamburger guy, a Mexican guy, an Italian guy, a fish guy, and, if you can, two real restaurants too. Of course, it depends upon the space.”

But is he satisfied with the Ventura mall’s dining circumstance?

“No,” he says flatly. “I’d like to see it remodeled.” And while that’s not in the immediate offing, “there may be two new sit-down restaurants” included in the mall’s planned expansion, he says.

Most complaints about food, it turns out, come from “women who want to have a salad and a glass of wine and sit down and relax” while at the mall, Rausch says. But such civilized places, in claiming special floor space for seating in which alcohol is permitted, often require additional investment on the part of the mall owner to create a more cafe-like environment, “and that’s risky,” says Rausch. Still, one of MaceRich’s malls in St. Louis, which Rausch describes as “upper crust,” has such offerings in its food court, and overall it turns a profit.

The Oaks is the odd one in this crowd. It has no food court, despite the area in which Hot Dog On A Stick faces not only Mrs. Powell’s cinnamon rolls but also a flourishing McDonald’s. Its many establishments are sprinkled throughout the vast shopping center, lending a randomness and fatigue to the experience of looking for a place to eat.

“Customers do prefer clustered food,” says Barbara Teuscher, manager of The Oaks, referring to food courts. “But it’s very difficult to retrofit a space and much easier to design it in before the mall is built. So ours are very spread out.”

But the long-term plan at The Oaks is to make things less random and “cluster” the restaurants around the mall’s entrances. This, predictably, will be driven by the staggered expiration of leases drawn years ago.

As for the current state of dining at The Oaks, Teuscher joins Hartwell and Rausch in wishing for more and better in nicer surroundings. “I think, and it’s the consensus of our leasing team, that there’s room for improvement,” she says. “And we’d like more variety.”

*

The American shopping mall has much riding on its food. Its food purveyors are not just a service, a convenience for shoppers. Mall owners discovered this fact not by a rarefied calculus but by noting that tired and hungry shoppers would stick around the mall and maybe even shop some more if given a place to rest, refuel, regather.

And they discovered that the weary and the hungry would pay big-time for relief and comfort.

The MaceRich company, owner of Buenaventura, reports annual food court sales at its malls at $700 per square foot of leased space. This compares to roughly $265 per square foot of average sales by retail stores at its malls, typically stores such as The Broadway and Sam Goody and Big 5 Sporting Goods.

These figures go off the charts at such food-conscious and food-savvy malls as Santa Monica Place, which ranks in the top five nationally in sales in the upscale array of 80 malls run by the Rouse Company of Baltimore, Md. Here, says leasing chief Elyse Carian, food court sales top $1,000 per square foot, with retail at $370 per square foot.

Not all of the difference, however, is profit to the hamburger maker. A hefty portion of those earnings goes right back to the malls for the busing, upkeep, and capital improvements of the food courts’ common eating area--a payback that, in effect, represents a second “rent.” And a portion of sales (typically 8%) after a certain level is achieved is paid to the mall’s owners--a payback that acknowledges the mall’s role in generating the traffic for such success.

But the sheer volume of sales still puts most food purveyors out front of retail stores and thus, more than a decade ago, made the case for improved dining choices at our malls.

Santa Monica Place realized this and is perhaps the boldest in dealing with the problem of retrofitting an inadequate food space. It completely renovated the northern 3% of mall space (10,000 square feet), carefully re-leased portions of it, and, less than two years ago, reopened it as the neon-crazy EATZ, a tiled and tiered food court so acute and local in its food choices as to shun all national chains.

“This place is doing well because the choices are limited, focused, and speak to this particular market,” Carian says. “It’s about the customers, figuring out what your market is. It’s partly creative, partly deductive: Who’s here?

“Would it work in Ohio? I don’t know. It works here, in West L.A.”

Instead of a chain or franchise Fish ‘N Chips booth, for example, EATZ features a purveyor called Rock ‘N Roll that sells, among other things, a fresh charcoal grilled ahi sandwich--stylish California fare by anybody’s lunch standards. Who’s behind Rock ‘N Roll? A Santa Monica restaurateur known for his seafood treatments and lured to try a mall outpost.

Ditto for one of the higher-volume sellers--a specialty salad shop called California Crisp, a Carian concept that a local entrepreneur bought into. And ditto for what Buenaventura Mall’s Rausch refers to as every mall’s “good hamburger guy”--no chain but instead the popular Venice Beach-bred purveyor Muscle Beach Burgers.

Even the Muscle Beach menu, however, came under Carian’s editing thumb.

“It’s a fine line in establishing what to offer,” Carian says. “Too many choices is actually a problem. Why have something that another guy across the way is going to have? Put the hot dogs and burgers in one operation; you don’t need a restaurant for each. Give a place its own thing, and let it sell on that. We worked with the guys at Muscle Beach because there isn’t a hamburger outfit nationwide that rang our chimes. Muscle Beach is known here, does what it does distinctively, and all we did was eliminate some things from their menu.”

In Ventura, both Buster’s Barbecue and Tipps Thai compare to Muscle Beach’s constellation--they’re local, widely respected and popular--but the farthest they stray from home base is to a mall-like outpost, the Plaza Cafes across from the Century Theaters off Johnson Drive.

But just as EATZ approaches relentless yuppification, note the familiar sign of one of its premiere performers, gaily colored in facade and staffed by gaily dressed servers: Hot Dog On A Stick. Carian is quick to explain the presence of this franchise of franchises in the most pridefully local of food courts: “They started right here in Santa Monica, at the beach, so they’re local to us and one of the highest volume sellers--it’s amazing what they sell. We’re delighted with them.”

She made no mention, though, of chromed pliers in these fryers.

*

As already brutal competition in the stalled Ventura County economy intensifies, mall management watches closely. And food, dicey as it often is in its current mall offerings (see accompanying story), figures into the equation.

The Esplanade’s Hartwell says plainly: “We’re on the brink of transformation. We have a proliferation of power centers--already there’s Oxnard’s (Home Base, Office Depot, Price Club)--and now Camarillo and Oxnard vie for huge outlet centers. Wal-Mart is coming in ‘93, and, in my opinion, we’re retail-saturated now.”

Hartwell allows, as well, that the layout of power centers allows for unhampered dining opportunities in the form of full, self-contained restaurants on the parking lot periphery. At the Office Depot/Home Base power center in Oxnard, for example, the Gargantuan and reliable Olive Garden and Red Lobster restaurants dominate two of the center’s entrances.

Hartwell sighs. “And so we look to the customer,” she says. “And you know what? People don’t want to just shop anymore. They want an experience. Bookstores that feed them cappuccino for free in a place to sit down and rest and read the magazines.

“And they want shopping centers that provide good dining.

“We’re working on it.”