Pogacha's Croatian Pizzas: Who Needs Tomato Sauce?

Restaurant review Pogacha, 119 106th Ave. N.E., Bellevue. 455-5670. Open for lunch Monday-Friday only, 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Open for dinner Tuesday-Thursday 5:30-9 p.m., Friday and Saturday until 10 p.m. Closed Sunday; lunch only on Monday. Wheelchair-accessible. Entirely non-smoking except for outdoor tables. Reservations accepted only for six or more. AE, MC, V; no personal checks. Wine by the bottle and glass. Catering, take-out.

Restaurateur Helen Brocard grew up helping her father prepare traditional recipes in the "Little Croatia" of Dockton on Vashon Island, where the mountains, water and weather reminded the Croatian immigrants that comprised 85 percent of the population so much of home. Years later, many of her family's recipes were incorporated into the menu when she opened her hybrid Northwest-Croatian restaurant, Pogacha, in 1986.

Only five blocks from downtown Bellevue's PACCAR Building and the deli-restaurant Brocard ran there for seven years, Pogacha - a clean, inexpensive family restaurant with good service and minimal decor (kids will enjoy using the provided crayons to draw on the paper tablecloths) - wasn't initially a success.

"When we first opened, people didn't understand what we were trying to do," Brocard said. "People were kind of disappointed when I said that we're a Croatian restaurant - they expected us to wear babushkas and be very ethnic. Everyone loves the food, but some are disappointed with the (lack of ethnic) atmosphere . . . so I don't call us a Croatian restaurant anymore."

Croatian cuisine, which combines elements from Italy and Greece, emphasizes healthful foods - lamb, chicken and pasta - with lots of fresh vegetables and herbs (especially sage and rosemary, grown from Brocard's garden). Instead of frying, meats are braised - like Brocard's lamb shanks (served with polenta and julienne vegetables) - or roasted, like the (grilled) Dobar Chicken (breast) in a port Gorgonzola cream sauce with penne.

The fat- and salt-conscious Brocard, who makes almost every dish fresh from scratch, cooks only with olive oil and will honor any special-dietary request. Every dinner entree is under $10.

The restaurant's most unique dish is the eponymous pogacha - small, light pizzas, baked in a large wood-burning oven (imported from Europe and assembled by hand), with unique gourmet toppings and no tomato sauce. Pogacha normally is a small, thin Croatian dinner roll, but Brocard's are as big as dinner plates. The inclusion of fontina - as well as three secret cheeses - with the standard mozzarella ensures that reheated take-home pizzas don't have the usual rubbery-cheese effect.

The varied toppings include artichoke hearts, feta, red onion and garlic oil; black forest ham, dried apricots and cream cheese; spinach, goat cheese and sun-dried tomato; and chicken, gorgonzola and walnuts. Pogachas also come with fennel sausage and kalamata olives; bacon, artichoke hearts and tomato; five cheeses; barbecue chicken and scallions, tomato and fresh basil, and fresh mushrooms and pesto. The pizzas range in price from $5.95 to $8.50, and all diners are welcome to concoct any substitution variation conceivable.

All the toppings are fresh and plentiful and stand out all the better without tomato sauce on the medium-crust pizzas. A light sauce can be added for die-hard pizza purists, but few customers seem to miss it. "A regular customer had been enjoying the pogacha for two years before she even noticed they didn't have tomato sauce," Brocard said.

The delicious Croatian Cousins - calamari and shrimp on capellini with tomato, basil and garlic - featured very tender squid but only four shrimp in a very light red sauce. (Croatian sauces are cooked quicker and thus are more delicate and not as intense as Italian red sauces.) Other seafood dishes include grilled prawns on polenta with roasted peppers and onions, and herbed prawns with artichoke hearts, kalamata olives, lemon, garlic and sun-dried tomato sauce over capellini.

Don't miss the fire-baked chicken breast, with fontina, prosciutto and a fresh sage sauce - a creamy, cheesy delight served piping hot with generous portions. Traditionalists will welcome the (sauteed) chicken Dijon with fettucine and herbs, and the chicken marengo, with sauteed mushrooms and a classic red sauce over fettucine.

The featured caesar salad includes lemon, basil and poached shrimp, and a spinach salad comes with curried chicken, dried apricots, spicy candied walnuts and balsamic vinaigrette. The gargantuan seasonal green salad with lemon vinaigrette is one of the largest dinner salads in town.

A nice surprise is the free refills on soda and ice tea (the latter curiously spiked with passion fruit).

Desserts include white-chocolate mousse with raspberries and marionberries; ice cream and sherbets; and a chocolate decadence gingerbread cake topped with raspberries and smothered in a marionberry sauce.

A smaller lunch menu features pogacha sandwiches, grilled-chicken salad, Greek tuna salad, prawns and chicken Dijon, as well as every pogacha.

Restaurant reviews are a regular Thursday feature of the Seattle Times Eastside Life section. Reviewers visit restaurants unannounced and pay in full for all their meals. When they interview members of the restaurant management and staff, they do so only after the meals and services have been appraised.