Most of the Decade

Most Ubiquitous Edible. There are at least 425 shapes and sizes of pasta -- round, square, tubular, flat -- and Americans seemingly craved them all. In the '80s the nation gorged on this basic yet incredibly varied Italian staple. Last year domestic consumption of pasta, from agnolotti to ziti, topped 4 billion lbs. -- nearly 18 lbs. for every man, woman and bambino.

Most Visible Gourmet. Jeff Smith of Seattle, the lanky, gray-bearded, cackle- voiced Methodist minister who calls himself the Frugal Gourmet, entered millions of American homes via his still running how-to series on PBS. All four of his precise, tip-laden and irrepressibly cheerful cookbooks -- The Frugal Gourmet, The Frugal Gourmet Cooks with Wine, The Frugal Gourmet Cooks American and The Frugal Gourmet Cooks Three Ancient Cuisines -- hit best- seller charts, with hard-cover sales of 3.4 million.

Fishiest Trend. Egged on by a growing interest in low-calorie, low-fat eating, fish fanciers widened their horizons in the '80s, moving beyond such familiars as salmon, bass and sole to nibble on once scorned ocean trash -- dogfish, skate and the impossibly ugly monkfish (often marketed under its seductive French monicker, lotte). New Zealand's orange roughy, among other imported novelties, made its appearance at supermarkets and dinner tables. Most fashionable of all: fresh tuna, usually served rare, and Hawaii's mahimahi.

Worst and Best Brews. Lites were everywhere, but one unfortunate trend started with California's surfers, who for some reason favored a pale yellow liquid in a clear, long-neck bottle. Thin and acrid, Mexico's Corona Extra soared to second place among U.S. imports (after old favorite Heineken). What could connoisseurs do? Well, many of them reached for a real beer produced by one of America's feisty young microbreweries, from California's tangy Sierra Nevada to the malty Samuel Adams Boston Lager.

Most Overdue Liberation. Shattering the traditional male domination of serious restaurant cooking, an innovative crew of distaff chefs -- among them the pioneering Alice Waters of Berkeley's Chez Panisse, Anne Rosenzweig of Manhattan's Arcadia and Susan Spicer of New Orleans' the Bistro at Maison de Ville -- proved that wearing skirts was no barrier to donning toques.

The Ersatz Ascendancy. From Japan came salty, rubbery surimi, a processed fish paste that appeared on countless menus under the guise of lobster and crab legs. In the interest of dietary moderation, Americans during the '80s consumed an astonishing variety of re-engineered foods and beverages, including low-cal salad dressings and lite mayonnaise, diet yogurts and calorie-skimping frozen dinners.

Most Overdone Craze. Paul Prudhomme of K-Paul's restaurant in New Orleans, the globular Cajun chef, was the man responsible for a dish that eventually became too much of a good thing: blackened redfish, in which a fillet is dusted with spices and then seared on a red-hot iron skillet. Suddenly, chefs who had never been within light-years of a bayou were giving us blackened tuna, blackened swordfish, blackened bluefish, blackened scallops, blackened . . . burp!

The Justest Dessert. While the fashionable may have pigged out on dacquoise, white chocolate and tiramisu, what turned on many Americans was a popular perennial: ice cream. But spare the vanilla, counterman. From superrich, chocolaty DoveBars to satiny Italian gelato, the nation's taste buds went for premium quality and perky flavors.

Most Popular Entertainment. For a time it seemed that dining out had supplanted baseball or moviegoing as the all-American pastime. Trendy, self- styled trattorias and bistros, with provocative menus and often with fanciful decorative themes devised by hip designers, became a form of impromptu theater for tuned-in young foodies and grazers. Two years ago, some of the diners-out began to drop out, abandoning the scene to turn into couch potatoes. But their need for instant, easy sustenance fostered another trend: take-out food.

Hottest Sideline. Americans seem to like reading about food as much as eating it. About 700 cookbooks are spawned in the U.S. each year, now including several dozen devoted to the ever developing craft of microwaving. Is there no limit to their writers' ingenuity? Apparently not: witness the publication last October of Manifold Destiny. Subtitled The One! The Only! Guide to Cooking on Your Car Engine, this ho-ho-ho paperback, by Chris Maynard and Bill Scheller, contains recipes for 36 dishes, including Lead Foot Stuffed Cabbage (cooking distance: 55 miles), that can be heated on a V-8 while the auto is in motion.