Most of '88 Recipe of the Year: Eat and Be Well

By Mimi Sheraton

Still shakily insecure after the crash of '87, food trendies this year looked for safer culinary havens. They snuggled up to take-out food in the barefoot safety of their own living rooms, or sought out comfort foods (pasta and pizza, meat loaf with mashed potatoes and gravy, creamy desserts) in small, moderately priced Italian trattorias and American bistros. Many of them shunned the lavishly styled and priced restaurants, which in general took an almost unprecedented beating. The beef industry fought back even while the promise of immortality via good health made a superstar of cholesterol- reducing oat bran. And Oprah Winfrey's public skinnying down with the Optifast liquid diet may just make real food obsolete by the century's end.

THE BIGGEST BOOK FOR THE BUCK Weighing in at 7 lbs. and priced at $50, the new American edition of the French food encyclopedia Larousse Gastronomique, edited by Jenifer Harvey Lang (Crown), comes in at only 45 cents per oz., less than the price of fine veal or salmon. Rewritten and modernized in France, then translated in England and its measurements and ingredients Americanized, this essentially French work expands sections on China, Japan and the U.S. Too bad that the text and illustrations are so lackluster.

CINDERELLA FOOD OF THE YEAR Discovered to be a crunchy ally in the dietary war against cholesterol, previously unglamorous oat bran has experienced a jump of 600% in sales this year for the Quaker Oats Co. alone. Health buffs are sprinkling this supposed miracle on virtually everything, even high-fashion muffins. Only the farmers seem unenchanted. Oat bran still brings a far lower price than corn and barley, and so is not likely to be given more acreage.

HIGHEST-PRICED PASTA The single most expensive pasta extant is the soft egg raviolo (the singular of ravioli) that is a $36 hot ticket at San Domenico, the best new Italian restaurant to open in Manhattan in the past five years. The large silky square of pasta enfolds spinach, ricotta cheese and a whole egg yolk that poaches as the raviolo cooks. But the reason for the price lies in the topping of hazelnut butter and a fine, if sparse, mincing of white truffles.

THE BIGGEST BEEF Considered a villain by anticholesterol forces, beef has taken a drubbing in sales in recent years. Now, thanks in part to a diligent advertising campaign ("beef: real food for real people") and undoubtedly to the natural longing for this most American of meats, sales are increasing in many parts of the country, in some areas as much as 20%. But many butchers bow to the times and trim all visible gristle and fat.

FOOD FASHION COLOR Beet red is the shade showing up in a few trend-setting new American boutique restaurants. It is valued primarily by chefs for its color, even though the beet's earthy flavor is anathema to many customers. In some places beets can't be given away, according to one chef in Dallas. However, they are glossing (and hopelessly muffling) ingredients such as lobster and ice cream at Rakel, and are adding heft to rabbit salad and halibut at Bouley, both in New York City.

HOTTEST RESTAURANT DESIGNER Suave, clubby dining rooms with mellow wood- paneled walls, glistening brass and a glowing wash of light are trademarks of the year's most popular restaurant architect, Adam Tihany. He is responsible for the quietly formal Huberts and Metro in Manhattan, and Bice, which will also open in Los Angeles and Chicago next year.

MOST DELICIOUS FILM SEQUEL When the Danish film Babette's Feast opened in the U.S. early this year, the irresistible meal prepared by the French-chef- masquerading-as-housemaid was offered in a posh restaurant in most of the cities where the film was shown. The meal, with its turtle soup (real or mock), its blini pancakes with caviar, the cailles en sarcophage -- quails with truffles and foie gras in a "sarcophagus" of puff pastry -- and the yeasty rum-drenched baba dessert, has become a classic staple at Petrossian in New York City, at $125 with the wines or $90 without.

TRENDIEST REGIONAL CUISINE Say so long to the chilies and blue cornmeal of the Southwest and to the Northwest's oysters, salmon and brambly herbs. The regional cuisine of the moment is dubbed "heartland," the bland and stodgy meat-gravy-and-potatoes fare of the Midwest. No doubt it will soon appear in stylized versions, complete with oysters, salmon, chilies and blue cornmeal, to become indiscernible from the food of other regions.

SWEETEST COMEBACK Profiteroles, the tiny ice-cream-filled cream puffs, considered the glamour dessert of the '50s and long passe, are back in favor at newly fashionable restaurants. The final classic touch is the dousing of bittersweet chocolate sauce, a sundae kind of taste that is so essentially American.

LEAST-NEEDED NEW PRODUCT Take mineral water from Mendocino, Calif., turn it over to chef John Ash, and be prepared for Truffle Water, a sourish-smelling carbonated drink that suggests spoiled milk, sulfur and stale beer. The question is not how he thought of it, but why?