As the longest living, eating restaurant critic in the world, or at least on the Upper West Side, I get requests every week for interviews to plumb my supposed expertise and harvest my reveries. Given my selective memory, I try my best to be helpful.

       What was different about eating out in the 60s? someone asks. You could get a table at a hot restaurant between 6 and 9 pm. Chefs were likely to be found in the kitchen.

       Is there a prejudice against women restaurant critics? Women chefs, yes; women critics, definitely not. Maybe in 1968 when I started reviewing for New York, but not now.   

starting even before Helen arrived to take over and invent the Cosmo girl. So I try to dredge up memories that aren't already in my memoir, "Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess."

       What do I remember? We both wore falls in the big hair days. And Pucci. I remember her slip showing. I remember her book full of story ideas that she would offer writers she summoned to her desk. The "emo" pieces. And her "icky boo" edits in my major oeuvre: "The Cosmo Girl's Book of Etiquette." She put them into the manuscript. The editor, Jeanette Sarkisian, took them out. I am forever grateful. I remember that even when she had delivered billions to Hearst and lived in luxury with her beloved David Brown on Fifth or (was it Park?) she still refused a car and took the bus to work.

       Last week, Brooke Hauser spent time in the HGB archives before she called to interview me. She sent me a photo of an ancient "Step Into My Parlor," by Helen, on me and Tom Wolfe. Cosmo had published an excerpt from his "The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby." I'd written "Freudian Slips and Other Nude Underthings" for her. It seems I claimed a woman's choice of underwear reflected her innermost sexual fantasies. Underpinnings were evolving quickly then from Maidenform rigidity to sheer and colorful, barely-there freedom.

       Later would come the golden 70s when, single again, I carried a satin teddy in my coat pocket to dinner and the disco, just in case I didn't get home to my own bed. At least I remember that.
       The West Side Rag's new restaurant roundup alerted me to Bustan on Amsterdam, not far from my homestead. "Sounds Lebanese," I said, confusing it with Al Bustan across town. "Sounds like mezze," I told my friends on West 86th Street. "You can walk," I tempted them.

       That first Saturday night, the place was bustling. The usual display of discipline (no, not from me, needless to say, but from my pals) vanished with the landing of olives and the house's fabulous, blowsy flatbread like a stretched-out pita, warm and oozing from the oven, for scooping up the spreads. "Mazettim," the menu calls them -- one for $5, three for $13, five for $19. I chose the quintet: hummus, tzatziki, spicy feta, smoked eggplant and Moroccan turnips, pickled pink. I could live without the turnips but I'm polishing off the last of everything else.

       Why isn't the menu more Lebanese? I'm wondering. I don't need to come here for salmon roulade when I can have a "Soft Egg Bourrick." That could be Tunisian or Algerian, I'm thinking. If I were more of a linguist, I might have picked up the Israeli vibe. Mazettim, it seems, is Israeli. Google didn't seem to know that. Perhaps the other odd spellings are Israeli too. Want to know more? Click here to discover what I loved in my three visits to Bustan. 487 Amsterdam Avenue between 83rd and 84th Street. 212 595 5050.

Sticks and Stones: Grasstronomy at Blue Hill       

      
       The three of us were joking and jiving with visions of Lucullus-only-knows-what deliciousness as we drove up from Manhattan to Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills for dinner at Blue Hill Wednesday. 

       The winding entrance, the stretch of candlelit stones leading to the sprawling barn, the smiling

welcome inside, the low buzz in the elegantly-swathed dining room -- brown velvet, thick tablecloths -- the solicitous captain, the confident sommelier, the properly suited pilgrims, the tulips. The art on the far wall that brings the surrounding fields into the room. It fueled our excitement. It promised that yes, indeed, this could be the best restaurant in the continental United States as Internet enthusiasts report.

       After confiding our allergies, our likes and aversions, the prepubescent little root vegetables that arrived impaled on spikes in a winsome lineup made us smile. Should we eat the thread-like tails? Midway through the parade of leaves and berries and pickled things, I was reminded how cranky I can become when dinner stretches beyond two hours and on into three.

       It was the devout and messianic Dan Barber, evolved into a warrior of sustainability, possibly over-doing the forage and forest riff that evening because it was me. Not even the chewy beet jerky or the fine coppa made from the farm heritage pigs could satisfy our hunger.  

       Blue Hill regulars return every season to worship whatever Chef Barber harvests. Click here to read more, decide if you might want to disagree. 630 Bedford Road. Pocantico Hills, NY 914 366 9600.