THAT CUISINE AND NICOTINE CONNECTION . . .

Smokers, gather round: Wanna know where you can puff with impunity and light up without guilt? Where your butts are welcome and your smoke tolerated? Want to inhale deeply in elegant, expensive surroundings?

Then head right out to Los Angeles’ finest restaurants.

Los Angeles restaurants are currently exempt from the smoking laws that affect offices and other work sites. They don’t have to cater to clean-air fanatics, and most of them don’t. This situation may change: The Los Angeles City Council is about to ponder a proposed amendment to the present no-smoking ordinance that would extend its jurisdiction to restaurants. While several restaurant chains already offer voluntary no-smoking sections, only one high-price finest-food establishment is even contemplating a no-smoking section.

“It just doesn’t work,” says Roy Yamaguchi, chef-owner of 385 North. “From a business standpoint it’s just not practical. Let’s say the back half of the restaurant is no-smoking. What happens when people are coming in and they’re all smokers? You could have 10 people with reservations come in and we’d have to tell them to wait because all those empty seats in the back are for nonsmokers. Our main concern is always to take care of the customers; we are in business to serve people.” But Yamaguchi also serves nonsmokers.

“(The absence of a no-smoking section) doesn’t seem to bother people to that extent,” he says. “We have pretty high ceilings, the smoke tends to go up.” And if anyone fired up a cigar, Yamaguchi says he would “ask that table to go to the bar and I’d buy them a cognac.”

Yamaguchi’s restaurant has two main rooms plus a private dining room, similar in size to Michael’s in Santa Monica--another restaurant with excellent food and a laissez-faire attitude toward smoke. “We don’t have a no-smoking section per se,” said one Michael’s manager, Jim Castle, “and we don’t allow cigar or pipe smoking anywhere.” If patrons do request no-smoking--a rare event, Castle says--they are seated in the garden room between the dining room and the outdoor patio. But isn’t it possible that a smoker could be seated next to a nonsmoker in the garden room? “Yes, but it’s almost outside.”

“Big deal!” scoffs a nonsmoking friend. “Outside is no better than air conditioning. The same breeze that blows the smoke away from me can also blow it right up my nose.”

Many of the newer restaurants are one big (or small) room, not so easily divided into separate areas. Restaurant owners claim, with some justification, that it’s futile to bisect one room into smoking and nonsmoking when it’s all the same air.

“That’s just dumb,” retorts my nonsmoking friend. “A cigarette across the room is less annoying than one at the next table. Period.”

“It’s not in my best interests to police my customers,” Ken Frank says flatly. Frank, owner-chef at one-room La Toque, won’t divide his restaurant, he says--but he does police his customers to some extent, not allowing them to smoke cigars, pipes or clove cigarettes.

“Smokers need to be considerate of nonsmokers,” Frank says. Are they? “Absolutely not. Cigar smokers are the worst.”

In Los Angeles those few restaurants that have set aside no-smoking sections are mostly non-nouvelle chains: Hamburger Hamlet, Denny’s, Magic Pan, Sizzler--or natural foods restaurants like the Good Earth and Chez Naturel, with no representative of L.A.’s finest--yet.

Trumps, the restaurant with the concrete tables, has a heart of gold where nonsmokers are concerned. Once construction on the front “terrace” is completed, that room will be restricted to nonsmokers. But Trumps will be careful not to offend; incoming patrons, says co-manager Julia Washington, will not be asked if they want a no-smoking section. Rather, those customers who request a nonsmoking area will be accommodated. “We haven’t had that many requests,” Washington says.

Hamburger Hamlet owner Marilyn Lewis says her restaurants set aside no-smoking areas, usually about one-third of the space, because her customers demanded it. “They ask for everything they want. If they want margarine instead of butter, or skim milk--they wanted decaf coffee before anyone knew what it was--they tell us.” And Lewis listens.

But such dialogue is never heard in a nouvelle palace; not one chef or manager could remember more than one or two such requests in the last year.

A nonsmoking TV producer of my acquaintance thinks that people who go to those classy restaurants just don’t care about such things. “People kill for certain tables at Spago, they don’t care whether they’re smoking or not. I mean, talk about a nonsensical thing--a power table. “ And at some of the overbooked restaurants in Los Angeles, just getting in is like storming Omaha Beach; better not make a fuss about the hazy air.

But maybe a fuss could change a restaurant owner’s mind and policy. “Anything is possible,” Yamaguchi says.

“I suppose if enough people asked, I’d reconsider,” Frank says.

Restaurant owners may not have a choice in the future, though. The recently proposed additions to the Los Angeles city smoking ordinance definitely include restaurants: Those restaurants seating 50 or more people would be required to reserve 50% of their space for nonsmokers. “There are only seven cities or counties in all of California that do not regulate smoking in restaurants,” says Glenn Barr, deputy to Los Angeles City Councilman Marvin Braude, sponsor of the initial no-smoking ordinance and the proposed revisions. “Los Angeles is one of the seven.” Barr thinks the revisions will be voted in, or out, within the year.

Meanwhile, up in Berkeley, all restaurants, regardless of size, must allot 50% of their space to nonsmokers; in Palo Alto, the figure is 60%.

In Berkeley, Chez Panisse’s downstairs room--the famous dining room, not the upstairs wait-in-line section--has not permitted smoking for “years and years,” says maitre d’ Fritz Streiff. This has not noticeably affected their business; they’re still sold out every night.

Berkeley’s Fourth Street Grill set aside two-thirds of its space for nonsmokers. “No-smoking is overwhelmingly popular in Berkeley,” says Fourth Street manager Bucky Harris. “A lot of people, when I can offer immediate seating in the smoking section, will choose to wait for a table in the no-smoking section.” A scenario opposite to Yamaguchi’s worst nightmare.

Smokers may be facing dark days--and not just those caused by their own cloudy emissions. Besides extending its current smoking ordinance to restaurants, the proposal now on its way to a Los Angeles City Council committee would also prohibit smoking in all retail stores (except tobacco stores, logically enough), in all service lines, in certain areas of museums and libraries. . . . Where will smokers go? What will they do?

For now, they can keep on enjoying some of the best food in the country with no restrictions at all.

And if the proposed restrictions pass?

There’s always picnics.