DISHES OF WHICH MEMORY IS MADE

THERE are certain dishes that captivate the appetite so powerfully they give pleasure even in reminiscence. In 1961, I made a trip to France, and for the first time I had enough money to enjoy some of the two- and three-star restaurants of that country. We traveled through Burgundy and down to Marseilles, stopping as the Guide Michelin dictated our journey, and wound up for lunch one sun-drenched day at the Baumani ere restaurant in Les Baux-de-Provence, where we dined from the kitchen of Raymond Thuilier.

I do not recall an appetizer or soup, although I am certain we were served one or both. I do not recall salad or cheese or dessert. What I do recall in total, ineradicable detail was the main course. We dined on the fish known as omble chevalier or char, a member of the salmon family, which we were told had been brought in from Lake Geneva. It had been coated with a Nantua sauce made with crawfish butter and blended with a bit of hollandaise. The fish, on a silver tray, had been glazed to perfection under the good chef's salamander. It was garnished with one small crawfish and that was all.

But it isn't only elegant dishes that one savors in memory. Within the past several months I have dined on three dishes that each, in its own way, seemed to me to approach perfection. The first was a plate of delicately seasoned ravioli topped with a mushroom sauce. Another was a relatively simple preparation of steak, charcoal grilled and folded into a freshly made flour tortilla. The third was a more elaborate concoction of tarragon-flavored steamed crab, served with a sauce Nantua. When I think of meals that have recently given me pleasure and somehow captured my imagination, these three dishes stand out in my mind.

The ravioli dish was served in my hometown of East Hampton, L.I., at a restaurant known as L'Orsa Minore, where one day this summer I was encouraged to try the ''pasta of the day.''

It turned out to be a filled pasta called tortelloni, a large, square- shaped type of ravioli. When I sampled this dish, with its stuffing of veal flavored with prosciutto and the subtle seasonings of sage, rosemary, marjoram and thyme, with its exemplary sauce of wild mushrooms, I was immediately hooked.

I learned that the chef, Giulio Intravaia, was born 28 years ago in Sicily in the small town of Torretta, about seven miles west of Palermo. His professional training was in the Italian- speaking canton of Ticino in Switzerland.