7/28/00

Restauranteur leaves 'geeky' Silicon Valley to fulfill dream

STAN DIAMOND Dianna and Charlie Wareing stand outside the restaurant they opened in Bentleyville.

BENTLEYVILLE - Sometimes, when customers enter a new restaurant in Bentleyville, the owner smiles and says he hopes they're not in a hurry.

"I will be your waiter, cook, busboy and dishwasher," said Charles Wareing, while recently working at his new venture, Geek's Restaurant, which opened in Bentleyville last year.

Wareing and his wife, Dianna, traded California's Silicon Valley and its high-tech lifestyle for the serene hills of Southwestern Pennsylvania.

"This place has back roads, creeks, trees; all the things we missed living in the Silicon Valley," Dianna Wareing said.

Her husband is giving it his all to fulfill his lifelong dream of being a chef, offering up his version of good food, even if it means wearing four hats at the business until it takes off.

He and his wife are aging hippies, back-to-the earth-types, who wear tie-dyed clothing to work. He spent more than 25 years in the "geeky" computer business, having experiences that inspired the name of his restaurant.

Before Dianna met Wareing, she raised her children in Washington County, and maintained friends in the area after she moved to California.

During a visit to Bentleyville, Wareing offered to cook Mexican food with his tangy red sauce at La Piccola Inn, a Bentleyville bar and restaurant owned by his wife's friend. The customers there couldn't get enough of his food, he said.

"When I came out of the kitchen, people were applauding. I was hooked," Wareing said.

He said he learned to cook as a child "in self-defense." His mother wasn't a bad cook, but he grew tired of the traditional dishes she served, such as spaghetti and meatballs, fried chicken, "nothing fancy," he said.

Beside working in the Silicon Valley, Wareing also spent time in Manhattan. It was there that he began discovering new recipes at restaurants. He was certain he could duplicate them in his own kitchen.

"I found people really enjoyed my cooking," he said.

He stumbled on a Bentleyvlle pizza shop that was up for sale when a friend was thinking about purchasing it to open a store. Wareing instead bought it for his restaurant.

The red walls were covered with a color inspired by tranquility, blue moon. Photographs taken by a friend, many of Christian cross images, adorn the walls.

The menu offers traditional fare, including spaghetti and meatballs, lasagna and steak.

But then there is geschnetzeltes, a word Wareing isn't certain he can pronounce. He calls it pork stroganoff for a lack of a better word, served in a tomato and sour cream sauce over German noodles cooked in chicken stock and garlic butter.

True to the jargon used in the 1960s, Wareing's appetizers are called munchies on the menu. For starters, he also offers sauced bread, or four slices of buttered Italian bread smothered in marinara sauce.

"It's like Italian biscuits and gravy," the menu states.