On a flat, dull stretch of the otherwise picturesque and hilly Route 2 sits a tiny, unassuming food trailer that at first glance makes you wonder what's going on.

Stop the car and venture over and you'll see there's nothing sketchy here. In fact, it's a lunch spot complete with table service. Skip's Roadside Diner, owned by Dennis "Skip" Scipione and his wife, Nancy, boasts homemade slaw, hand-shaped hamburgers, and some of the best Polish fare this side of Krakow.

Benny Rubin, a mechanic from nearby Turner s Falls, is tucking into lunch at a picnic table behind the trailer. Scipione, a dark-haired and still-boyish 60, pops out of the trailer's back door, crosses a grassy patch to Rubin's table, and sets down two Styrofoam trays, each bearing three golden brown pirogis, a kielbasa link with spicy mustard, and a spoonful of cabbage. "Hi, Ben," says the proprietor. "These are for a couple of people on their way over from work." Ever since word got out, locals know enough to call ahead.

The gravel parking lot crunches under the tires of an arriving motorcycle and two pickup trucks. Scipione lingers a moment to see if other customers need anything. "You don't meet many people like Skip," says Rubin, as Scipione hustles back inside to wait on a growing line of people. "He'll bend over backward for you."

Skip's Roadside Diner may look like a transient food stand, but its owners have an impressive track record. The Scipiones ran the Blue Moon Diner in Gardner for 16 years, during which time they earned praise for comfort food and personal service.

A former Fitchburg police officer, Scipione says he was "always eating at little coffee shops" during his 15-year career. When he retired from the force in 1984, he bought the Blue Moon, which was dirty and decrepit, and restored it to its 1940s glory. One of the original Worcester Lunch Cars, the Blue Moon, with its Tennessee marble counter and oak booths , drew the attention of diner aficionados, as well as the film crew of the movie "School Ties."

Exhausted from waking up at 4:30 a.m. six days a week, the Scipiones sold the Blue Moon in 2000. But the couple missed cooking and the camaraderie of customers. "We are both too young to be retired. You need a purpose in life," says Nancy Scipione, 57.

The two decided to open a seasonal restaurant small enough to run by themselves. They could take winters off to snowshoe, hike, and cook at their post-and-beam mountain home in Petersham.

Two years ago, they bought a 10-by-20-foot trailer, which had been used to serve ice cream in Keene, N.H. , and outfitted it with a kitchen. They actually have more cooking space than they did at the Blue Moon, with all the amenities of a restaurant kitchen, including an Autofry

The Scipiones bought the parcel of land where they planned to park the trailer. They intended to serve standard diner fare until they learned that Polish food had been offered on the site for much of the last 30 years by a changing cast of local characters with names like "Mr. Z."

"So we kept up with the Polish food," says the Italian-American Skip Scipione. "I had never even had a pierogi until I started this business," As it happened, Nancy Scipione grew up cooking Polish cuisine alongside her Polish-American stepfather, and the site's last owner offered the names of two Polish food suppliers.

Now in its second season, the stand serves both kielbasa sausages and less-familiar kielbasa patties from the local Chicopee Provision Company, which has been manufacturing under the Blue Seal brand since 1920. Two kinds of hand-stuffed pierogi -- a rich dumpling filled with potato and farmers' cheese and a more savory variety stuffed with cabbage -- come from a well-guarded secret source.

"They are as close to homemade as you can get," Scipione says. "People tell me they taste better than the ones their mother made. We fry them on the grill with butter and serve them with sour cream. We also got a really good recipe from the [Polish] former chief of police in Westminster, who helped us out with the kapusta." Kapusta means "cabbage" in Polish. The Scipiones' version features a complementary sweet and vinegary mix of cabbage, sauerkraut, chopped kielbasa, onions, and some secret spices.

"The cabbage is all shredded by hand," says Nancy Scipione. "So the kapusta takes an hour just to chop everything and then three hours to simmer." Similar care goes into the bulk of their menu: their own coleslaw, burgers assembled from freshly ground meat or chopped sirloin, and hot dogs grilled or steamed to order.

She deftly juggles as many as 13 sizzling items at a time, drawing on the multitasking skills she developed first while managing a call center for Nynex and later at the Blue Moon. Her husband is more gregarious, she says, so he is the face of the diner. "We know what our strengths are and try to utilize those."

It appears to be paying off.

"We thought we'd get most of our business from people driving by on Route 2, but we have a lot of local customers who eat lunch here a few times a week," she says. "We just hired two people, and we may have to hire more."

They both like the idea of table service. The alternative would be customers ordering at the trailer, then sitting down until someone hollered your number. "We'd rather have you go sit down and relax," he says.

Originally published online here: http://www.boston.com/ae/food/restaurants/articles/2007/06/20/a_hot_spot_for_roadside_polish_fare/?page=1