America's Best

A roving publicist's pick

Boston Publicist C. Paul Luongo likes to describe himself as a "person of infinite taste." Leaving aside whether such a claim itself shows infinite taste, Luongo set out six years ago to prove it by tracking down the best goods and services offered in the U.S. The entries in his list book, America's Best! 100 (Sterling; $9.95), range from airports (Tampa, of course) to zoos (San Diego, naturally). In between, he roves entertainingly, and often eruditely, through such recondite subjects as octopus-ink paintings, spumoni fudge and specialty cement. For the list mavin with less esoteric tastes, Luongo offers his verdicts on the best available wines, foods, hotels, shops and salmon waters, as well as just about everything else enlistable from banana ice cream to bouillabaisse, pizza to personal submarines, johnnycakes to jogging roller skates.

Few connoisseurs en chips would dispute Luongo's potato chip entry: Kitch'n Cook'd, made in minuscule quantities by Dewey Kobayashi on the Hawaiian island of Maui. (Luongo notes that the average American consumes 4 Ibs. of chips a year.) Few connoisseurs of anything are competent to contest his claim that the best shoofly pie is made by Dutch Haven Amish Stuff Inc., in Soudersburg, Pa., or that the best dimensional paper sculptures are fashioned by an insomniac housewife in San Diego, Calif, or that the best herbal medicine man holds forth --between nonherbal snacks on Hostess Twinkies--in Glenwood, W. Va.

Luongo is on more demonstrably safe ground in naming Ocean Spray as the No. 1 purveyor of cranberries ("Brigitte Bardot reportedly bathes in them and considers them something of an aphrodisiac") and the Boeing 747 as the best jet (it is, Luongo points out, fast, safe and comfortable and guzzles the least fuel per passenger of any commercial aircraft). Similarly, he endorses the best lobster as coming from Maine, the best mushrooms as Pennsylvanian and the best mules as Missouri's. The best veal, according to Luongo, comes from Delt Blue Provimi Inc., in Watertown, Wis.; the best steaks from Murray's in Minneapolis (both are available by mail). The best jelly beans, as J.B. Addict Ronald Reagan may know, come from the Jelly Belly of South El Monte, Calif, in 32 flavors.

Some of Luongo's choices are more debatable. For the best appetizers, he picks the oysters Rockefeller served by Antoine's in New Orleans; they have sometimes proved a pallid parody of the original, which was reputedly invented at that watering hole. His candidate for best volcano, Kilauea on Hawaii Island, is surely a country mouse compared with Oregon's Mount St. Helens. Experts might challenge Luongo's contention that the best botanical garden is in St. Louis (New York City's in The Bronx is at least bigger); that the Beast at King's Island in Ohio is the wildest roller coaster (over Coney Island's Cyclone?); that the premier Cabernet Sauvignon wine comes from the Napa Valley's Heitz Cellars (some might award this prize to the Robert Mondavi reserve).

Whether right or wrong, however, Luongo put in painstaking research. He claims to have invested $250,000 and 150,000 miles of first-class air travel in his investigations. He does not nominate the best airline.

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