FOOD QUESTION? DIAL THE ANSWER

The number is (213) 930-2111, and the bells are constantly ringing. At the moment it is a man’s voice on the end of the line, and he is saying, “I want to know where to get 30 dressed turkeys right away.”

“Do you mean in little suits?” replies Chloe Ross, and then before the man can get angry she gives him the name of a butcher who will provide exactly what he needs. She puts the phone down, but it rings again before she takes her hand away.

It is the president of General Electric, calling from the East Coast. He is planning a trip to Los Angeles, and is eager to eat at all the right restaurants. Ross asks him a few pertinent questions: Does he care how much he spends, what kind of food does he like, does he prefer bright lights or soft settings? She jots down his replies and promises to call him back with an itinerary. But before she can get to this, the phone is ringing once again. A local man has a desperate question: Where can he take his wife for quiche and dancing?

Ross and her partner Rita Garlington have all the answers for the ‘80s. Their new service, Foodsource Hotline, has stepped boldly into the information gap, providing the answer to the most-asked question of the decade: Where shall we eat dinner?

“We were both restaurant publicists,” says Ross, “and we found that we spent all our time telling people about restaurants and caterers and where to find unusual foods. People kept calling up and saying, ‘You seem to know about these things.’ We liked answering the questions, and we realized that we really had amassed a mountain of information.” The two decided that since they were spending so much of their time on the telephone, they might as well try to make it pay.

But how? “We wanted to be real voices on the phone, real people you could talk to, not a recording. There are a lot of people with questions out there, and we wanted the service to be available to anyone who wanted it, free of charge.” Suddenly they had a brainstorm: Why not get restaurants and caterers and grocers to pay for the service?

The response was positive: restaurants like 72 Market Street, 385 North, Chianti Cucina, Ruth’s Chris Steak House, Trumps and Le Dome all wanted to be counted in. So did the Irvine Ranch Market and Regal Rents and the Wine House; before long more than 100 businesses had agreed to pay a monthly fee of $50 to be listed on the hot line. “We don’t limit our recommendations to members,” says Ross. “We will give people whatever information they need. But if it is appropriate, we recommend someone who is on our list.”

The phones first rang in October, and they rang often. From the start 25 to 30 people a day were calling with culinary queries. The questions keep rolling in--people want to know everything from how to get in touch with Julia Child to where to buy a paring knife in Louisiana. At the current rate of growth, the hot line will soon need a third person to answer the phones.

But where do you find someone who’s got all the answers? “You’d be surprised,” says Ross, “this has massive appeal to foodies. We keep getting calls from people who say: ‘I’d love to do what you do.’ ”

And no wonder. Every time a call comes in, it is clear that Ross and Garlington are having a wonderful time. As Ross puts it: “We have hours of relaxing hysteria here. Take yesterday: A man called up and said, ‘Tell me where to eat.’ I told him that I needed more than that to go on, that he had to tell me what sort of food he likes, or something. He refused to give me any more information, so I told him that in that case I couldn’t help him. He snarled at me, ‘I suppose I’m just supposed to go hungry, is that it?’ ”