Tip of the Iceberg

Julia Reed's Food columns are as refreshing and as crisp as the iceberg lettuce featured on Aug. 24. I especially appreciated the line ''the days when you could go out and have a cocktail and a cigarette and a turn or two around a dance floor before sitting down to some food that was actually pretty good.'' The decrease in the number of restaurants offering these pleasurable activities is not a result so much of the fact that the ''food became so overwrought'' as of our posturing puritanical politicians and their overzealous taxation and regulation.

Lynne Breaux
Washington