National Restaurant Association

Owners Kim Strengari and Marianne Gere are waiting tables and tending bar at their West Conshohocken restaurants Stella Blu and Gypsy Saloon, where they've decided to cut their own salaries in half. In Center City, Del Frisco's Double Eagle, a pricey steakhouse opening later this month, is adding cheaper wines to its list and is promoting its more affordable bar menu. And Stephen Starr has hired a chef to develop lower-priced dishes for the menus at his restaurant empire. "Everyone I talk to is saying their business is 10 to 15 percent down from what it would normally be this time of year," said Gere, who is earning tips to supplement her salary.

Mary T. Kaminski Stafford, 84, cofounder of Chubby's 1 1/2 Hearth Restaurant in West Collingswood, died Wednesday at Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center, Camden. A resident of Camden's Fairview section, she was born and raised in the Gloucester Heights section of Gloucester City. In 1933, Mrs. Stafford and her husband, Joseph J. "Chubby" Stafford, founded Chubby's 1 1/2 Hearth Restaurant, a West Collingswood facility with a capacity to seat 400. She served as the business' treasurer.

Chicago is known for its steakhouses and San Francisco its Chinatown. Seattle? Salmon. Kansas City? Barbecue. And pasta rules in South Philly. It's true - we are what we eat. "The culture and atmosphere of cities is absolutely reflected by their restaurants," said Steven Anderson, president of the National Restaurant Association. "They used to be a part of the leisure sector of the economy. Now, they're part of our everyday lifestyle. " George Ritzer, a sociology professor at the University of Maryland, agreed.

SEATTLE - If you missed the fried rice with pungent shrimp paste at Shophouse Seattle on a recent night, well, too bad. The down-home Thai joint already has shut its doors. Shophouse creator Wiley Frank spends most nights as sous chef at an upscale restaurant called Lark. But once a week, Frank and his wife transform a nearby bar called Licorous into a short-lived eatery dedicated to simple, authentic Thai street food. His venture is just one permutation of an emerging class of restaurants called pop-ups, in which chefs set up temporary shop in, for example, breakfast spots, art galleries, and financially troubled eateries.

When Steve Poses closed his high-priced Philadelphia restaurant, Frog, in 1987, he suggested that it was a victim of aging baby boomers. "We baby boomers were going out a lot, dating and courting" and willing to blow a bundle on a candlelit dinner, Poses said about those days in 1973 when he opened Frog. "Now we have families and are staying home more. " Now, four years after federal tax reform cut into expense-account dining, three years after the stock market crash made people feel poorer and with hard times hitting the real estate market, restaurant owners nationwide are echoing Poses.

SOGGY BREAKTHROUGH The Journal of Food Science reports that researchers at Oregon State University have come up with a thin film of an edible fiber (methyl cellulose) that can be inserted between an ice-cream cone and a chocolate coating to keep the cone from getting soggy. CORNMEAL CONTEST The Quaker Oats Co. is seeking original recipes that use at least a half- cup of cornmeal as an ingredient. Entries must be postmarked by Jan. 31, and received by Feb. 8. The winning recipe will earn its creator $5,000.

The Supreme Court, bolstering the rights of political, religious, and commercial canvassers to go door to door to promote their causes, ruled 8-1 yesterday that it is unconstitutional for a city to require a permit to call on private homes. The ruling summoned a series of the court's longstanding precedents, assuring Jehovah's Witnesses and other groups of a right to peddle what may be unpopular messages without government interference. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, the lone dissenter, said the ruling may threaten the safety of householders from canvassers bent on crime, citing evidence that two Dartmouth professors were killed by two teen-agers who used the ruse of conducting an environmental survey.

America's restaurateurs have it wrong, Ky Ajayi was saying. American cities such as Philadelphia wouldn't need smoking restrictions if the restaurateurs would improve the air in their restaurants. Ajayi is an air-quality analyst at the four-day trade show of the National Restaurant Association, which is drawing 2,000 exhibitors and 90,000 representatives of the restaurant industry to the McCormick Center here through tomorrow. Yesterday, while other exhibitors sold their pastas and cookware and aprons and dishwashers and jalapeno poppers and computer equipment and, basically, everything one would need to operate a restaurant or dining hall, Ajayi stood in front of a glassed-in, dollhouse-size model of a bar-restaurant, complete with miniature smoking and nonsmoking sections and even an itty-bitty bartender.

Recessions come, recessions go, but the cry of "How about some Chinese food tonight?" apparently goes on forever. Be they L.A. writers hunkering down over scripts and $25 breakfasts at Hugo's in West Hollywood, Philadelphia lawyers stopping for quick lunches from a sidewalk vendor doling out $4.50 Mideast platters, or Miami Beach seniors looking for the day's best early-bird dinner special, Americans have not lost their taste for eating out....

For many years, they were dismissed as hamburger flippers and busboys, dishwashers and short-order cooks. Now, with almost half the country using their services each day, restaurant and catering employees are in hot demand. This was the message brought to Widener University's School of Hotel and Restaurant Management yesterday by Ralph Brennan, president of the National Restaurant Association. Brennan had plenty of good news for the several hundred students there who are planning careers in the food-service industry.

SEATTLE - If you missed the fried rice with pungent shrimp paste at Shophouse Seattle on a recent night, well, too bad. The down-home Thai joint already has shut its doors. Shophouse creator Wiley Frank spends most nights as sous chef at an upscale restaurant called Lark. But once a week, Frank and his wife transform a nearby bar called Licorous into a short-lived eatery dedicated to simple, authentic Thai street food. His venture is just one permutation of an emerging class of restaurants called pop-ups, in which chefs set up temporary shop in, for example, breakfast spots, art galleries, and financially troubled eateries.

Economic forces continue to pummel the restaurant industry, with more than three dozen closings in the region this year. Yet, surprisingly, at least as many eager opportunists have stepped in, checkbooks in hand, to open new ones. "Restaurateurs are, almost to a fault, optimists," said Michael O'Halloran, who two weeks ago opened Kong, a Chinese bar-restaurant in Northern Liberties with a low-priced, small-plate menu. But there is a difference: Unlike the barn-size, $10 million-plus projects like the plush steak houses that were the norm as recently as a year ago, restaurants now on the books tend to have fewer seats, lower prices, and less lofty ambitions.

Owners Kim Strengari and Marianne Gere are waiting tables and tending bar at their West Conshohocken restaurants Stella Blu and Gypsy Saloon, where they've decided to cut their own salaries in half. In Center City, Del Frisco's Double Eagle, a pricey steakhouse opening later this month, is adding cheaper wines to its list and is promoting its more affordable bar menu. And Stephen Starr has hired a chef to develop lower-priced dishes for the menus at his restaurant empire. "Everyone I talk to is saying their business is 10 to 15 percent down from what it would normally be this time of year," said Gere, who is earning tips to supplement her salary.

Ethnic discrimination, sexual harassment, gender bias, and minimum-wage violations are not on any restaurant menu, but the nature of the business can lead to these problems for restaurant workers. Particularly vulnerable are workers who are young, inexperienced or foreign, such as the increasing number of Mexicans who work in the kitchens of Philadelphia's restaurants. Those were the kinds of workers affected by a recent U.S. Department of Labor probe into employment practices at a popular Philadelphia restaurant chain, the Marathon Grill.

People who eat at restaurants - especially fast-food and deli-style sandwich shops - are far more likely to report getting stomach illnesses than people who stick to their own kitchens, according to a new survey. The study, and others presented recently at the International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases in Atlanta, showed the difficulty of stopping foodborne illnesses, which strike an estimated 76 million Americans a year. While past food-safety efforts have been aimed mostly at upgrading home kitchens, the latest survey, performed by epidemiologists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and seven state health agencies, suggests problems also exist outside the home.

The Supreme Court, bolstering the rights of political, religious, and commercial canvassers to go door to door to promote their causes, ruled 8-1 yesterday that it is unconstitutional for a city to require a permit to call on private homes. The ruling summoned a series of the court's longstanding precedents, assuring Jehovah's Witnesses and other groups of a right to peddle what may be unpopular messages without government interference. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, the lone dissenter, said the ruling may threaten the safety of householders from canvassers bent on crime, citing evidence that two Dartmouth professors were killed by two teen-agers who used the ruse of conducting an environmental survey.

Some children are picky eaters. Others are fine diners with tastes that span continents. The former eat only PB&J cut in precise triangles or Chicken McNuggets drowned in ketchup. The latter prefer spongy Ethiopian bread or spicy baingan bhartha (eggplant curry, to the less adventurous) or green-tea ice cream. "It's so yummy," said Leo Whitten, 5, of Havertown, ticking off his favorites, including tofu, chicken tikka masala and, OK, macaroni and cheese. "I can't remember all the others," he added.

Chicago is known for its steakhouses and San Francisco its Chinatown. Seattle? Salmon. Kansas City? Barbecue. And pasta rules in South Philly. It's true - we are what we eat. "The culture and atmosphere of cities is absolutely reflected by their restaurants," said Steven Anderson, president of the National Restaurant Association. "They used to be a part of the leisure sector of the economy. Now, they're part of our everyday lifestyle. " George Ritzer, a sociology professor at the University of Maryland, agreed.

The death of a popular caterer who apparently choked in a Center City steak house last Friday night is prompting some local restaurateurs to consider offering more first-aid training. Given the restaurant industry's high staff turnover, first-aid programs likely cover only a small percentage of the 115,000 restaurant workers in the region and the 11 million nationwide. It largely is up to a restaurateur to decide whether to hire the American Red Cross or another instructor.

America's restaurateurs have it wrong, Ky Ajayi was saying. American cities such as Philadelphia wouldn't need smoking restrictions if the restaurateurs would improve the air in their restaurants. Ajayi is an air-quality analyst at the four-day trade show of the National Restaurant Association, which is drawing 2,000 exhibitors and 90,000 representatives of the restaurant industry to the McCormick Center here through tomorrow. Yesterday, while other exhibitors sold their pastas and cookware and aprons and dishwashers and jalapeno poppers and computer equipment and, basically, everything one would need to operate a restaurant or dining hall, Ajayi stood in front of a glassed-in, dollhouse-size model of a bar-restaurant, complete with miniature smoking and nonsmoking sections and even an itty-bitty bartender.