One Meatball . . .

According to a 1945 presidential decree, all Argentine restaurants, even such famed luxury resorts as the grill rooms at the Plaza and the Alvear Palace Hotels in Buenos Aires, are required to list and serve the menu econimico. This 32-c- meal typically consists of uninspired soup, a snarl of spaghetti, nondescript fish and a tired banana.

To order such a meal, a customer has to have more crust than a Bowery mission pie. But some of the owners and waiters have worked out a defensive "treatment" for such diners. As soon as they hear the odious order, waiters snatch the tablecloth from the table and the napkin from the diner's lap. The table is set with chipped crockery and kitchen silverware. Then, aiming at the kitchen and rearing back, a waiter bellows at the top of his voice: "Menu econimico for one!" That attracts the attention of everyone in the dining room. Trying to ignore the snobbish glances from other diners and the sneers of waiters, the customer bolts the food. If he tries to make amends by leaving a tip, the waiter gives him the final cut: "Keep it. You need it worse than I do."

But the days of the treatment may be numbered. Last week the dutiful Peronista press took up the cudgels for the menu ecnimico, warning waiters that any more such sabotage of the restaurant law could mean big trouble. La Epoca insisted: "The cry, 'Menu econimico for one!' must never again be heard . . . How would a waiter feel if he went into a shoe store and the clerk shouted: 'A pair of cheap shoes for one'?"

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