Food With a Czech-ered Past

When it was one nation, Czechoslovakia was the very center of Central Europe, a part of the world where the Germans make goulash, the Hungarians make strudel and everybody from Russia to Austria eats sauerkraut. The Czechs and Slovaks, standing in the middle of all this culinary borrowing, have a lot of familiar-sounding dishes in their repertoire, but there’s a stubborn individuality to how they make them.

Now, Redondo Beach might not be where you’d expect to find a Czech restaurant, but there happens to be one called the Czech Point right on Artesia Boulevard, in a tiny building with a Googie’s-style slanting roof about two blocks east of Aviation Boulevard.

It’s a bright, cozy place of white walls and blond wood paneling, sparely decorated with nostalgic prints of Prague, a comic poster of a beer-hall brawl and dozens of Czech beer coasters. There’s a little rack of books and magazines in Czech, and the beers on tap are exclusively Pilsner Urquell and Staropramen. (A few American beers are available in bottles, and there is also a basic wine selection.)

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Every entree comes with soup or salad, so you don’t really have to order an appetizer, but if you do, the daily changing list offers some early surprises. You can always get what the blackboard menu calls garnished egg (in Czech, ruske vejce, or Russian egg). It’s really more of a garnished potato salad--finely diced potatoes mixed with peas and carrot shreds, topped with beautifully hard-boiled eggs, sour cream and thinly sliced ham--and it’s a luscious starter. Other likely appetizer choices are fresh herring in sour cream and homemade head cheese.

There are always two or three soups available. The chicken soup is plain chicken noodle, but the rest hold more surprises. The potato soup is a clear soup that tastes more of wild mushrooms than potatoes. The goulash soup is a rich, meaty broth redolent of beef and carrots--and caraway, a spice that lends its polished aroma to most of the entrees here.

On the other hand, the cabbage soup will probably taste far more like goulash to you. It’s a rich, tangy bowl of pork sausage, sauerkraut, diced potatoes and sour cream, rather like a Hungarian szekely gulyas.

Most entrees are accompanied by the biggest bread dumplings you ever saw--so big you don’t get a whole one, just a couple of slices. They’re a source of humor (on the bulletin board there’s an anecdote about a 16th century battle where they were pressed into service as cannon balls), but Czech dumplings are actually the best thing for sopping up rich gravy because they’re more absorbent than French bread but not as soft as American bread.

The Prague-style roast pork, a classic statement of this simple, hearty cuisine, is just thick slices of pork with sweet-and-sour sauerkraut and dumplings. Halusky is the same roast pork and sauerkraut with a different starch, little gnocchi-like potato dumplings. On Friday and Saturday nights, there’s nicely roasted duckling (its skin rubbed with caraway) with dumplings and sweet red cabbage.

With the other entrees, we’re back in surprise country. The beef goulash is chunks of stewed beef in a very beefy dark-brown gravy with a caraway undertone. The Wiener schnitzel is made of pork, not veal, and the meat is sliced about as thick as your average pork chop; it comes with potato salad. The Bohemian sauerbraten is a little dry but not bad with its garnish of cranberries--though its mild, yellow cream sauce probably won’t remind you of German sauerbraten at all. Sometimes there’s chicken or even rabbit paprikash in a yellow-orange sauce about the color of strained squash and, it should be said, about as bland.

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You may have noticed a pointed absence of any vegetable but cabbage here. However, there is a vegetarian entree, smazeny kvetak, which is fried cauliflower served with tartar sauce.

The standard dessert is apple strudel, a version that’s mostly apple and walnut filling with just a hint of flaky pastry. Often there are crepes filled with stewed strawberries, like fresh strawberry jam. And often there’s the Czech Christmas bread, vanocka, an egg bread with raisins and nuts in it. It’s like an Italian panettone, only fresh (and warm).

Hey, Redondo, check it out.

BE THERE

Czech Point Restaurant, 1981 Artesia Blvd., Redondo Beach. (310) 374-7791. Open for dinner 5 to 10 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, 4 to 9 p.m. Sunday; closed Monday, Tuesday. Beer and wine. Parking lot. All major cards. Dinner for two, food only, $22 to $31.

What to Get: garnished egg, cabbage soup, pork roast, halusky, roast duckling, beef goulash, Christmas bread, strudel.