TASTE OF THE TOWN: Michael Paskevich

      Cheap eats and reader searches for good barbecue and hard-to-find Polish food are today's main courses up for consideration, and we should be able to help out on at least a pair of culinary fronts.
      The exception remains the lack of Polish food to be found in Las Vegas, and Tim Hojnacki, who knows his stuff as a former sausage maker in South Bend, Ind., joins several others who are mystified by the missing cuisine.
      His "easy" if perhaps pricey solution: "Fly to Detroit and take a cab to one of those quaint little Polish restaurants ... or send my mom a plane ticket and she'll come over and make you some!"
      Nice offer, Mr. Hojnacki, although your follow-up suggestion to research Polish cookbooks is probably a more workable alternative. "With all the Polish people in this city," he writes, "I can't understand why someone can't get it together and open at least one Polish restaurant! I'd do it myself if I wasn't disabled."
      So, reader Scott Krause's search for Polish pirogi has come a cropper, at least for now, and that stuff in the frozen food section of supermarkets simply doesn't cut it. However, Hojnacki says the golobki (stuffed cabbage) at the Sahara Buffet is pretty good and he would love it if they'd add czarnina, Polish duck soup.
      Texas transplant John Marshall's hunt for down-home barbecue in Green Valley -- a possible contradiction in terms -- has led readers Barbara and Hy Cohen and Ruth and Artie Rosenberg to suggest that he try T-Bone's Texas-Style Bar-B-Que inside the Swizzle Stick video poker lounge at 2740 N. Green Valley Parkway.
      "We had the `feast for two' ($21.95) which was enough food for three or four people," wrote the Cohens, saying the platter came with barbecued chicken, beef and pork ribs (the Rosenbergs' favorite), beef brisket, corn muffins, beans and salad. "It's the best we've found in Las Vegas."
      T-Bone's is nothing fancy, partitioned off from an adjacent video poker bar with room for about 60 customers, kids included. Owner Bill Ware opened the eatery around Christmas, giving him a second branch to go along with his 4-year-old T-Bone's at 4734 E. Flamingo Road.
      Ware isn't from Texas, but he's a trained chef with serious credentials in Los Angeles (Lawry's The Prime Rib, among other fine-dining establishments) who arrived in Las Vegas with a craving to give barbecue a try. "So far things have been going very well," he says.
      Both T-Bone's locales are open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily (until 10 p.m. on weekends) and offer home delivery as well as pickup with a minimum $7 order. "Cheap eats" luncheons include a quintet of barbecue platters, all priced at about five bucks, while dinner specials range from $9.95 for a half-order of baby back ribs on up to the aforementioned "feasts," all served with generous amounts of side orders.
      Reader Barbara McNeal says barbecue hunter Marshall should try Schuler's Roadhouse at 4755 Spring Mountain Road where owner Dan Schuler imports choice pork-loin baby back ribs from Ohio. These are the same seasoned ribs that earned the Montgomery Inn at the Boathouse the title of "Ribs King" of the Cincinnati area for the past 40 years.
      Longtime Las Vegas chef Joe Chehade runs the kitchen and makes homemade Saratoga potato chips to accompany ribs that are slathered in a sweet yet slightly tangy "Ribs King" sauce.
      Schuler's, a cozy 88-seater that once was a Mad Dogs and Englishmen pub, serves slabs of ribs with trimmings at $12.95 and also features weekday lunch specials such as Cajun chicken salad, and soup and sandwich combos priced from $3.95. The entire menu minus the lunch specials is served daily from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 a.m., and takeout service is available along with a selection of 19 imported and domestic beers to wash it all down.
     
      Submit information to Michael Paskevich, Review-Journal, P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, Nev. 89125-0070. You also can reach him by fax at 383-4676 or through computer e-mail at Mike_Paskevich@lvrj.com.