Belt Tightening a Few Notches

By EMILY MITCHELL.

Food as entertainment was a fad of the ostentatious '80s, but yesterday's foie gras has become today's mashed potatoes. In a time of recession, diners are still serious about what they eat, but they look hard at their wallets before perusing the menu. Aware of this, restaurateurs are combining ingenuity with unpretentious ingredients to come up with dishes that are easy on both the palate and the pocketbook.

As the craze for chic cuisine has calmed, there is a renewed taste for homey -- and less expensive -- staples of the past. Put plainly, the croissant is out and the doughnut is in, and the same goes for restaurant fare. At some haughty spots like New York City's four-star Le Cirque, the humble turnip is increasingly turning up in soups and as a side dish. Addio, radicchio.

Some restaurants have undergone full-blown conversions. The 10-year-old Courtyard in Austin closed last year, and when chef-owner Gert Rauch reopened it as the Courtyard Grill, he had done away with grilled pheasant breast with shitake mushrooms in favor of more casual food, such as grilled marinated duck with warm cabbage salad. In Cambridge, Mass., Michela Larson added a glass- enclosed cafe atrium to her restaurant, Michela's, which serves a restrained version of her Northern Italian dishes. Cod, braised and served with a sauce of leeks, sherry and smoked bacon, replaced grilled swordfish. In the main dining room, it's all wild mushrooms and truffle oil; in the cafe, the fungi are tame and the oil is olive.

If there is one U.S. city where people live to eat out, it is New Orleans. Businessman Tripp Friedler and chef Larkin Selman reopened the intimate Gautreau's there just as the economy fell like a souffle in a cold draft. Their formula: combine more expensive main dishes with less costly garnishes, and visa versa. An appetizer of crab cakes, for example, is accompanied by marinated black beans. Caviar is not out of the question, but it comes from a local fish called choupique (pronounced shoe-pick) and is said to be as good as any other American kind and is a lot cheaper than the Russian variety.

Even though the restaurant business "moans about how tough the times are, things have never been better for customers," says Tim Zagat, who with his wife Nina publishes annual restaurant surveys of 20 cities and areas. He believes there is a greater selection than ever of high-quality, affordable dining places. In recognition of that, the 1991 Zagat guide to Southern California restaurants lists the "Top 100 Bangs for the Buck," inaugurated in the New York edition a few months ago. For the first time, formerly unfashionable cafes and family-style restaurants are ranked for value with the same care afforded Spago or Lutece. A wedge of ollalieberry pie at Russell's, an inexpensive Long Beach, Calif., eatery, is deemed "a slice of pure heaven." Not far away is the Shenandoah Cafe, where patrons "love those apple fritters."

"People aren't eating out less," says Ronald Paul, president of Technomic Inc., a Chicago-based market-research firm. "They are just seeking better value." If, as the French gourmand Brillat-Savarin observed, you are what you eat, these days Americans are down-home, comfortable, just plain folks -- but not to be taken for granted.

With reporting by Laura Claverie/New Orleans and Janice M. Horowitz/New York