February 14, 1986

A RESTAURANT writer's mail is a fairly accurate social barometer. The scores of letters I receive every month offer a revealing sketch of how New Yorkers spend their leisure time, much of which involves socializing in restaurants. I have been surprised at how many of the letters request recommendations of romantic settings in which to dine. Recently there was a shy young man trying to muster the nerve to ask out a woman in his office, several spouses approaching important anniversaries, estranged couples looking for a suitable place to talk things over, and one jittery would-be fiance.

The Central Intelligence Agency aided Honduran security forces that it knew were responsible for having killed a number of people they detained for political reasons between 1981 and 1984, according to two American officials and a Honduran military officer. The C.I.A. agents did not directly take part in actions by the Honduran Government units, the two American officials said. The help they provided included training and advice in intelligence collection as part of a program to cut off arms shipments from Nicaragua to leftist rebels in Honduras and El Salvador. ''The C.I.A. had nothing to do with picking people up,'' said one of the American officials, who has intimate knowledge of American policy in Honduras. ''But they knew about it and when some people disappeared, they looked the other way.''

Bronx Borough President Stanley Simon said yesterday that he had been subpoenaed as a witness in the continuing Federal investigation of political corruption in New York City. According to others who have received subpoenas, the subpoena issued for Mr. Simon was one of a number issued to Bronx campaign operatives and political figures, including a member of the City Planning Commission. They are part of what the United States Attorney in Manhattan has described in court documents as ''an ongoing investigation into political corruption.'' Mr. Simon said he was not a target of the investigation. ''Like any good citizen I am prepared to cooperate,'' he said.

Companies Detroit wrapped up its second-most-profitable year with a report that Ford earned $2.5 billion and Chrysler $1.64 billion in the year. G.M. earlier said it earned $4 billion. But industry analysts say the companies will be hard pressed to match that performance in the future, as new entrants and added production capacity make the market more competitive. [ Page D1. ] Sales of new American-made automobiles rose 4.3 percent in the first 10 days of February, with the help of low-rate financing. [ D3. ] Chrysler will cut $710 off the base price of a scaled-back version of its Dodge Omni and Plymouth Horizon, to $5,499, in an attempt to stem the influx of low-priced imports. The company said the experiment will succeed only if it can sell the models in high volume. [ D3. ]

''They say good things come in threes, so. . . .'' - Evelyn Marie Adams, two-time million-dollar winner in the New Jersey lottery. [ A1:1. ]

Anatoly B. Shcharansky today described life in Soviet jails, detailing methods of psychological and physical pressure to force political prisoners to inform on others or confess to fictitious crimes. For an hour and a half, he answered questions at his first news conference since being released Tuesday after nine years of imprisonment. He said recalcitrant inmates were placed in isolation cells and exposed to cold and hunger. Prisoners of different ethnic groups are turned against one another, he said. And he gave a formula for maintaining mental balance: focusing on fond memories of people, places and events of the past.

Friday 'ROMANCE ON ICE' Valentine's Day brings an ice show called ''Romance on Ice'' to the South Street Seaport, which is celebrating a Winter Festival this weekend with free festivities ranging from ice sculptures to wandering minstrel singers. ''Romance on Ice,'' with a cast of 12 led by Laurie and Greg Welch, will be presented today at 5:30, 6:15 and 7 P.M. at Pier 17, off South Street. Performance times Saturday and Sunday are at 2:30, 3:15 and 4. An ice extravaganza of a different sort is offered up in the Masters Gallery of Ice Sculpture, which opens today at 2 in Market Square, between Fulton and South Streets. Created by chefs from restaurants and hotels, the ice sculptures include an 1,800-pound Cupid and a frozen jungle complete with a giraffe, tiger, bear and elephant. Meanwhile, a video theater at 14 Fulton Street will provide continuous screenings of six films on skiing, while outdoors a band of ''Currier and Ives'' singers roams the seaport in 19th-century attire. Information: 732-7678. CLOWN AND MIME Bob Berky is a well known clown and mime artist, and Valentine's Day finds him doing a one-man show called ''Bob Berky in Concert'' at Snug Harbor's Veterans Memorial Hall. Mr. Berky explores scenes that range from the gymnasium to his morning shower. The performance begins at 8 P.M. at 1000 Richmond Terrace on Staten Island. Tickets are $6. Information: (718) 448-2500.

The American automobile industry wrapped up the second-most-profitable year in its history today, as the Ford Motor Company reported 1985 earnings of $2.52 billion and the Chrysler Corporation reported $1.64 billion. Added to the $4 billion reported earlier by the General Motors Corporation, it brought the Big Three's total profit for the year to $8.16 billion - a sum exceeded only by the $9.8 billion the industry earned in 1984. The Ford and Chrysler yearly figures were somewhat crimped by their respective fourth-quarter results: Chrysler posted a big decline over the comparable 1984 period; Ford's earnings were virtually a rerun of its 1984 quarter. Most industry analysts say the auto companies will be hard pressed to match the performance of the last two years in the future, as new entrants and added production capacity make the American car market more competitive.

Federal officials said yesterday that they had found a second bottle of Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules laced with cyanide that had been seized from a store in Westchester County. The discovery came five days after a woman died in Yonkers from a Tylenol capsule that contained the poison. In addition, a Federal official said a third bottle had been found in Westchester that had a single capsule contaminated with a minute amount of a substance ''that most likely is not cyanide.'' The Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, Frank E. Young, said the amount of the substance -possibly an industrial cleaner - was so minute that the capsule had been shipped to a lab in Cincinnati for a more definitive analysis. A spokesman for the F.D.A. in Rockville, Md., said last night that the bottle of Extra-Strength Tylenol that definitely contained the poison contained five capsules filled with potassium cyanide, the same substance that killed the woman, 23-year-old Diane Elsroth, on Saturday.

James Anderson, an engineer for the Eastman Kodak Company, described a sense of nervous anticipation in the company's vast factories, laboratories and offices here. ''It's like thinking about a car wreck,'' said Mr. Anderson, one of 54,000 who work for Kodak in Rochester. ''One assumes it won't happen, but then again it might.'' Kodak's employees are worried about their jobs, and Rochester is bracing for the fallout. On Tuesday, in an announcement that shocked the city, Kodak said it planned to eliminate 10 percent of its total work force, or 12,900 employees scattered around the world.

COMEDY has been called ''the rock of the 80's'' for very good reasons. With stand-up clubs booming and the Johnny Carson and David Letterman shows and ''Saturday Night Live'' turning young comedians into overnight sensations, there is a feeling that in comedy the sky's the limit, that all it takes to win the entertainment sweepstakes is the right oddball character spouting the right shtick. Despite the abundance of merriment to be found on television and in the stand-up clubs, intelligent humor that aspires to the range of Nichols and May, Lily Tomlin, and Richard Pryor, remains a relatively rare commodity. This weekend, however, there is an unusual profusion of thinking-person's comedy in New York. Many of the brightest young improv and stand-up comics will gather at Folk City tonight through Sunday to celebrate the third anniversary of its successful Sunday evening comedy series. At Don't Tell Mama tonight and tomorrow is ''The Kathy and Mo Show,'' an in-depth character comedy revue with music that features Kathy Najimy and Mo Gaffney, two women with the potential to become the Nichols and May of feminist-oriented humor. And this weekend the Second Stage of the New Theater of Brooklyn is presenting the final performances of ''Nuclear Follies,'' a topical cabaret view of the end of the world.

Philip C. Habib flew to the Philippines today on a fact-finding mission for President Reagan, as Senate criticism erupted over Mr. Reagan's handling of the issue of fraud in the presidential elections there. Key senators in both parties said the United States should cut off American aid to the Philippines if President Ferdinand E. Marcos was re-elected through fraud. Both Senators Bob Dole, the Republican majority leader, and Sam Nunn, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said the United States should not feel bound to keep the key air and naval bases in the Philippines if Mr. Marcos wins. The most outspoken reaction was from Mr. Nunn of Georgia. He said in a letter to Mr. Reagan that Mr. Marcos's challenger in the election, Corazon C. Aquino, should be the winner on the basis of the actual vote, but that Mr. Marcos and his allies ''are in the process of making an all-out effort to steal the election by massive fraud, intimidation and murder.''