Manhattan’s restaurant industry is parched. Greed numbs the palate. The great, gushing expense account has been dammed all summer. Twofers, trading down, tip-pinching and ordering from the right side of the menu are rampant. “Put your money on the walls, and never mind the table,” is the brave new philosophy.

         Fall is still bearish. If the midi is rejected, disaster vibrations from the garment district will hurt. Wall Street’s lassitudes inspire a foreboding even in the very rich. Yesterday you were worth $4 million. Today you are worth $3 million. Suddenly, conspicuous spending seems unduly vulgar. Folks are playing poor, eating more for fun and nutrition, less for status. Menus are more tailored. Turbot flies in, not fresh, but frozen. Truffles are sliced thinner. Service is simpler less professional, almost invisible. Dress rules relax. Formal is a tie-dyed bowling shirt. Summer weekend restaurant closing were common, as were unusually extended vacations. Some may simply never reopen. House butchers and staff pastry chefs are expendable luxuries. More restaurants are buying pre-butchered meats and Miss Grimble’s goodies. The one-man-in-the-kitchen operation is already with us. Machines that toss a salad or blend a stew at the push of a button are…soon. Soybean “ham” and “chicken” are already here. And that benevolent despot, the snob maître d’hôtel, is learning to love us: Semi-Beautifuls, Uglies and Gaucheniks all.

         Autopub, underground at the General Motors Building. Bucket seats, rumble seats, love seats in open and closed cars. Or dine at the drive-in movie (Dear John, Hiroshima, Mon Amour, Cool Hand Luke, cartoons on Saturday). All chrome and tufted leatherette with dazzling Indy racers parked on the ceiling. Sinuous fuel dispensers in zip-up jump suits. Barmen in “Getty” mechanics’ coveralls. Limited menu. A gas from Ellman-Long-champs.

        Le Drug Store, 65th and Third. Le club founder Olivier Coquelin saddled his Hippo and got out of this one, a mostly-franchise mixed-media market that’s had trouble lifting off the launch pad. Fast-food, seafood bar, newsstand, rags, drugs, Hammacher Schlemmer boutique. This one is announced annually, so expect it when you see it.

         Weight Watchers Restaurant, 8 East 49th Street. Horn & Hardart’s hangout for plumps. The menu is WW-certified “legal.” Fleshlorn “200ers” (200 pounds shed) are invited to the opening, where WW’s Great Blond Conscience, Jean Nidetch, will autograph her book. Who could stop her?

        Al Mounia, Madison at 38th Street. A somewhat authentic, somewhat tsatske’d replica of Al Mounia in Casablanca and Madrid by the Moroccan-American duo behind Nepentha. Cocktail lounge, discotheque and restaurant with mosaic-tiled fountain, crushed red plush, brass-tray-topped tables and a Moroccan chef. If the couscous is spicy and the bastilla sublime, excesses are forgiven.

        1Astor Place. Three by Restaurant Associates. A Zum Zum, natch, a terrace-up-high, and a Shubert Alley eatery.

        Louie’s, an “intime contemporary steak house” at 14 East 47th, where Circles used to be. A walk-through kitchen and see-through icebox. By Phil Sloves of Sam’s Restaurant.

        Potagerie, 554 Fifth Avenue. Starring soup.

        Nirvana, 1193 Lexington at 81st Street. Spicy offerings from India and Pakistan in a billowing Oriental tent. Dinner only.

        Pegleg’s, a nautical notion at 1738 Second Avenue (90th). Seafood and steaks, à la carte.

        The Famous Footman, 318 West 45th (near Eight). Michael Pearman brings the Running Footman theme to the woolly West Side.

        Pyewacket, 334 East 73rd Street. Another singles-eyeballing station by the gentlemen from The Recovery Room. Where Thursday’s was.

        Salaam East. An $80,000 restaurant, on the ground floor of Muslim Mosque 7 at 116th Street and Lenox Avenue, hopefully featuring Shabazz bean pie and Shabazz all-beef sausage.

        Chez Raymonde. In the old café St. Denis. 240 West 56th Street. Familiar French faces from the Potinière du Soir and le Caneton. Medium-priced table d’hôte.

***

         While you were philanthropizing in the Hamptons or airing your ennui in the Adirondacks or rejuvenating at Dr. Niehans’, there sneaked into town: Adam’s Rib, 23 East 74th Street, prime ribs of beef with all trad; The Duck Joint, 1382 First Avenue, mostly duck and goose in a fine-feathered setting; Restaurant America, at the Kennedy International Arrivals Building, replacing the Golden Door with a bit of practical chauvinism; Nemo’s Domain, by Horn & Hardart out of Jules Verne, a submarine mockup at 1 East 48th Street with Classic Comics art, seafood, steak and prime ribs; opposite City Hall at 25 park Row, another H&H effort; Hizzoner’s, “dedicated to the people who have run our city and to the foods that have kept them going” (liberal club sandwiches, Hell’s Kitchen burgers and lasagna à La Guardia). Now H&H has signed up Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday-Fridays’ man Alan Stillman to jazz up its specialty shops. Hizzoner’s will get a live donkey and elephant, “spontaneous political parades” and hopefully the mayor himself and a hot-line to City Hall.

       Facelifts and Transplants: Stew’s on Herald Square (starring stew) didn’t go and is due for a revamp…The Sign of the Dove is expanding…building a greenhouse, opening party rooms…Yellowfingers may get a flock of shops upstairs a la Le Drug Store…La Fonda del Sol is shrinking, will reopen with a 51st street entrance and a bank on its flank...Nathan’s is proliferating, ditto Zum Zum and Steak and Brew; S&B has moved into the Café Galerie and Roast Beef and Brew will replace Orangerie…The Colony is shopping for a new address…Brass Rail has invented something called the Drinking Establishment, the Steak House and the Dutch Corner...It sounds familiar…The Paradise will open Paradise East at 1230 Second Avenue, where Athena East used to be...

        The Café Pierre gets a face-and-body lift in its 24th year. Cocktails upstairs. Dining and dancing downstairs in “Another Part of the Forest” with brass trees beneath a “nighttime Parisian sky.” Late September…Thursday’s will become Thursday’s 24 in the old Escadrille hangar at 57 West 58th Street. Disco dancing around-the-clock and a new hour for mating: the 10-to-11 coffee break, all the coffee and Danish you can dance to…

       The Autumn Grape: Wine prices are up, up, up and infanticide rises as noble wines are consumed in their callow youth. Restaurants will begin offering neglected regionals, modest vins du pays, at the usual inflated markups (desperately needed to finance the last vestiges of haute cuisine). California’s top crus, Inglenook and Beaulieu, have a chic all their own. And the Cabernet Sauvignons are already in short supply. Hailstorms hit Burgundy in July, but Beaujolais ’70 will have a “magnificent year,” the French Wine Growers’ Institute promises. Hail decimated the Pouilly-Fuisse crop in ’69. Sherry-Lehman’s Sam Aaron recommends a Beaujolais Villages Blanc, $2.19. Peter Morrell likes the Blanc de Blanc of Provence at $1.99. Both are newly importing the light, fruity dry whites of Luxembourg: Rivaner, Auxerrois and Riesling, $1.99, $2.19, and $2.39.

       The Quality of Mercy: bicycle racks outside some Steak and Brews, a tiny blow against pollution; Le Pavillon’s carry-out lunch; Maxwell’s Plum’s new 24-hour-in-advance-notice dinner – loup de mer en croûte and gigot d’agneau in the Baumanière style (stuffed with kidneys and pastry-wrapped), about $9, starting October 1. A $9.75 prix fixe lunch at La Seine (where my last little filet of sole and asparagus snack for two ran $62 with tips and tax), plus twelve new Chagalls on the walls.