Popular Polish Fare

Since arriving in Ventura County from Krakow, Poland, in 1982, Christopher Pala, like the area’s other Polish immigrants, had to travel well into Los Angeles County to find genuine cuisine from his homeland.

Santa Monica and Glendale offered the closest restaurants serving up pirogi, kielbasa and other traditional Polish foods.

But the situation changed a few weeks ago, when Pala and his wife Malgorzata Wincencik Pala, also a native of Krakow, opened Polonia Polish Cuisine in Ventura. The restaurant is at 2833-A E. Main St., former site of the Garden Fresh Juice Bar and Restaurant.

“I was talking with some Polish people who were thinking about opening one, but they were just talking, it was a risk,” Pala said. “But we thought, if we don’t try it, how will we know?”

The Polonia menu, though limited for the time being, features the more popular dishes among people in Poland, Pala said.

It includes pirogi--flour dumplings filled either with chicken ($3.99 per plate) or cheese and potatoes ($3.30); koptyka--potato dumplings filled with beef goulash or lean beef, onions and paprika ($5.99), mushroom sauce ($3.50), or fruit and sour cream ($2.99); and golabki--stuffed cabbage with meat and rice served with tomato sauce or mushroom sauce ($4.99).

There is also kielbasa z kapusta--Polish sausage and sauerkraut with onions, caraway seeds, allspice and bay leaf ($4.75); fasolka--beans in tomato sauce with sausage, onion and vegetables ($3.99); lazanki--pasta with cabbage prepared with onion and bacon ($2.99); and rosol--chicken soup with noodles and vegetables ($1.99).

“The menu is not that big because we don’t know what people like,” said Pala, who used to own a fast-food-style hamburger restaurant in Austria. “If everything is going to go well, we will open something bigger. But first we will make the menu bigger.”

Pala and his wife share the cooking chores at the restaurant. Though they are used to preparing Polish dishes, it’s a change of pace as a profession. Prior to opening the establishment, Wincencik Pala was a massage therapist, and Pala worked as a car mechanic and a truck driver.

*

With the dramatic advancements in computer technology, it may not be long before a PC can ask whether its user would like rice pilaf with his or her T-bone, and within five minutes prepare the meal and serve it.

But that’s at least a couple of months off.

For now, folks will just have to settle for ordering food straight over the Internet. That’s how Shaun Halladay, chief executive of City 411 Corp. of Simi Valley, plans to speed up the dining process.

Halladay and his company already have established City 411 Web sites for the cities throughout Ventura County, by which users can track down local businesses and events in their locale of choice. It’s a worldwide Web function the company intends to provide nationally.

Now, Halladay is preparing to introduce a Food Court that will allow computer users to order complete takeout or delivery meals from participating restaurants. The program is expected to be launched in Simi Valley.

Food Court will allow diners to select appetizers, main courses, desserts and drinks, with options for side dishes, rare to well-done meat preparation, sour cream or no sour cream on the baked potato and nearly everything else a waiter or waitress might inquire about.

The bill is totaled on screen as the high-tech diner orders. The order arrives as a fax at the restaurant.

“It’s open to anything that could and would do takeout,” Halladay said.

Food Court will include restaurants in the categories of American cuisine, steakhouse-barbecue, Chinese, Italian, sandwich-deli, Mexican, Oriental, seafood and pizza.

“People in the office who are stuck behind a computer all day,” Halladay said. “That’s who we were targeting at first.”

The menus will be accessible at their Web site addresses: city411.com or foodcourt.net.