Eat American!

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To most of these graduates, eclectic a key word. It certainly applies to the food served at Miss Ruby's Café, which opened late last year in Manhattan. Says Ruth Bronz, the Texas-born owner-chef: "I plan menu changes on a regular basis, switching from Cajun-Creole to New Mexican to Shaker. I'm missionary about it." Shaker food, along with the fare of the Pennsylvania Dutch and the American Indians, has already packed them in at special festivals in the formal American Harvest restaurant at Manhattan's Vista International Hotel. And surely eclectic the word for the menu at Bootsie, Winky & Miss Maud in Washington, where Owner-Chef Bob Green beguiles illustrious visitors like Sandra Day O'Connor with fresh pickled trout Hemingway; New England baked stuffed clams; Philadelphia submarines; winter cabbage leaf stuffed with sausage, rice and cashew nuts; and mocha butter crunch pie. One favorite here is the $5 meal consisting of peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, all the milk you can drink and half a dozen Toll House cookies. Notes Green: "To be really authentic we even have Marshmallow Fluff for those who want it." Similarly, there is a Southwest-Mexican down-home culinary representation at the slick, glittering Fog City Diner in San Francisco. At America, the 200 choices on the menu represent just about every ethnic and regional style that is currently fashionable. In truth, most dishes at the theatrical America can best be regarded as stage props.

Just as home-grown chefs are gaining favor, so domestic place names provide the new exotica on menus. Banished are the evocative references to such shrines as Burgundy, Provence and Lyons. Instead, the places dropped are likely to be El Paso, Iowa, Michigan, Memphis, Albuquerque, the Arizona Badlands and even the Bronx, where small farms and greenhouses supply endive and herbs to tony Manhattan restaurants and markets.

Apparently no other word means as much as American, and restaurant own-trying to grab it. In New York City alone there are, in addition to America, the American Festival Cafe in Rockefeller Plaza, An American Place on the Upper East Side, Cafe Americano and the American Harvest, operated by Hilton International, which also manages American Harvest in Washington and new one in Kansas City. There, however, they have chosen the simple word Harvest in order to avoid confusion with the established American Restaurant in the local Crown Center development. The American Grill prospers in Scottsdale, Ariz., and there is another in the Chicago area. Philadelphia boasts the USA Cafe. In Washington, the American Cafe, originally a casual, simple eatery, now has seven branches and plans to open 96 units 22 cities around the country. Part of expansion plan includes packaging food under the American Cafe label.

Judging by the wide acceptance of American products in gourmet food shops, that label should prosper. According to Stephen Pass, vice president Macy's Marketplace in New York City, Americans are eating a wider variety all kinds of foods, and native fare is benefiting from that trend. Says Pass: "American jam isn't necessarily Welch's anymore. We're going back to small artisans. We get foie gras from the Catskills now. Years ago, I crried Stilton, Roquefort, Gorgonzola and Danish blue cheeses. Now I stock about 15 blues, and two are American. I have 20 chèvres, four from the Northeast and two from the West."