RESTAURANTS : It’s Big, It’s Bold, It’s . . . Boy Food!

“You’re no fun anymore,” said my magazine editor friend in New York the last time I was there. “It used to be that when you came to town and I invited you to lunch, we got to go to great places like Le Cirque and Arcadia and Lafayette,” she said. “Now all you ever want to eat”--tones of disappointment and distaste here--”is boy food. “

I protested. I still liked to go to great restaurants, I said. Why, just the other day we’d gone to Sparks, hadn’t we? And before that Crist Cella, Smith & Wollensky, the Pen & Pencil? Nothing wrong with joints like that. Nice, comfortable places, every one of them. Places where you can get an honest drink, a serious steak, plenty of thick-cut bread and crisp-fried potatoes. Places where. . . . Oh. Yeah. I suddenly saw what she meant. Boy Food . She was right.

For whatever reasons--enoki ennui? blue-corn boredom? a surfeit of salade de foie gras ? -- I just don’t seem to be craving fancy-shmancy provender these days the way I used to.

I mean, I still like complex, sophisticated, capital-C Cuisine now and then. I’ve loved the meals I’ve had in recent months, for instance, at such gastronomically exalted establishments as Stucki in Basel, Guy Savoy in Paris, Citrus and the Four Oaks in Los Angeles and even the aforementioned Le Cirque in New York. But these simply aren’t the kinds of places that first spring to mind anymore when the old gastric juices start to flow.

Instead, these days I tend to think of old-fashioned and usually un-European restaurants--places where the food is simple, unarranged, predictable, big .

Now, don’t get all excited. I’m not setting up some sort of dichotomy between hearty, straightforward boy stuff on one hand and frilly, silly girl stuff on the other. I’m not talking Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche. Boy Food , appearances to the contrary, isn’t really a gender-specific term. It got its name, I suspect, because it’s the kind of thing that the men and women who call men boys think these boys eat when left to their own devices (as when, for instance, they go out with the etc.).

The truth is, of course, that almost everybody eats Boy Food at least now and then--men and women (and, for that matter, boys and girls) alike. All it takes is an appetite, and of course enough self-confidence not to care what your foodie friends are going to say.

What is Boy Food, exactly? Meat and potatoes, mostly--which is why so many boy-food restaurants (though certainly not all of them) are steakhouses. Meat means beef, incidentally, with pork and lamb as acceptable backups. Any place at which veal dishes outnumber beef dishes is not an authentic purveyor of Boy Food.

And the potatoes, in principle, should be fried--French fries, hash browns, cottage fries, home fries, etc.--though baked, mashed and oven-roasted potatoes are OK too. Boiled baby potatoes, potato croquettes and, for heaven’s sake, stuffed potato skins are not Boy Food. Potatoes baked in cream are Boy Food only if they’re real crispy on top. Scalloped potatoes are Boy Food; gratin dauphinois is not.

There’s more to Boy Food than just meat and potatoes, of course. Stews, fried chicken and barbecued anything are Boy Food, as are big sandwiches--as long as they don’t contain sprouts or mayonnaise flavored with anything other than mayonnaise.

Fish, contrary to popular belief, can be very much Boy Food--especially trout or catfish dredged in (yellow) cornmeal and fried in bacon fat; grilled swordfish or sea bass cut into steaks at least two inches thick, and anything fried.

Raw fish isn’t Boy Food unless you’re Japanese. Fish with Hawaiian names isn’t Boy Food either. Raw oysters are Boy Food when served in quantities of a dozen or more. Bay shrimp and bay scallops aren’t Boy Food, but bigger varieties of both creatures are. No fish small enough to fit in a fishbowl is Boy Food, with the exception of anchovies (pizza with anchovies, pepperoni, onions and bell peppers, incidentally, is Boy Food; pizza with goat cheese or sausage made from anything but pork is not) and, of course, sardines eaten straight from the can--which is sort of boy-food caviar. (Caviar is Boy Food only if you can’t afford it.)

Vegetables can be Boy Food, as long as they’re big (broccoli, asparagus), fried (zucchini, eggplant) or mushy (peas, lima beans). And corn, of course, is always Boy Food, both on and off the cob, so long as it’s mature (miniature ears of corn don’t count).

Salads make the cut as long as they’re not overloaded with ingredients best known by their French or Italian names (i.e., mache or radicchio ). Raw onions and/or blue-cheese dressing are boy-food salad basics.

Any food that comes with fruit on the side, even a porterhouse with French fries, is automatically not Boy Food--the exception being fish with lemon wedges. In general, fruit at boy-food restaurants belongs in pies.

The right beverage to drink with Boy Food is Scotch and water--though some boy-food restaurants do have good wine lists (New York’s Sparks is a model in this regard), and anything red and Italian is usually a safe bet. (White wine is not Boy Food.) It goes without saying, I hope, that cocktails with cute names and non-alcoholic drinks called things like slurpies or smoothies aren’t Boy Food.

The people who wait on tables at boy-food restaurants are usually old-timers who have seen it all, brother, believe me. They are frequently of Italian, Yugoslav (in New York) or Latino (in L.A.) extraction, and they never wish they were home working on their screenplay. They never tell you their name either, though they often wear name tags so you can learn it for yourself, if for some reason you’re interested. And, though they’ll sometimes tell you their feet are killing them, they’ll never ever tell you what their therapist thinks or compliment you on your haircut.

Where can you find Boy Food in L.A.? You won’t find it at Kate Mantilini, which tries hard (and even invokes the names of Musso & Frank and those now-defunct local shrines of Boy Food, Armstrong Schroeder’s and Ollie Hammond’s, on its menu), because its distinctly non-boy-food decor gobbles up most of its efforts.

Yanks offers token Boy Food--a steakhouse salad, for example, that has Boy Food written all over it.

The Original Pantry would be a Boy Food hall-of-famer if it had a bar. And then there’s the Palm, which is so single-mindedly devoted to the boy-food concept that it verges on a parody of the genre; it’s sort of what Boy Food would be like if it were a ride at Disneyland.