February 26, 1986

In what prosecutors might call the case of the man who was supposed to mind the store and ended up selling it, a state employee whose job it was to buy furniture and office supplies for his agency was charged yesterday with selling those items from the very office he was supposed to keep stocked. What is more, the Manhattan District Attorney's office said, the situation came to light when the purchasing agent tried to sell a safe to a retired detective. Sold During Business Hours The suspect, Vincent Hannwacker, is a supervisor in charge of mail and purchasing at the State Division of Housing and Community Renewal's district offices at 2 Lafayette Street in lower Manhattan.

The residents of this affluent village 15 miles from Broadway are proud of their highly regarded schools, pocket parks and model housing for the elderly. Many take an equal measure of pride in the things the community lacks: tall buildings, parking meters and fast-food restaurants. So when it became known that the Burger King Corporation was looking at a site on Middle Neck Road, the main route through the village, tempers began to broil. ''We don't want it,'' said Mae Maltin, an agent in the Gutterman Real Estate office just down the block. ''Why? Because we're snobs. It's that simple. I tell it like it is.''

SVELTE is unquestionably fashionable in today's chicken world. Two major producers - Perdue and Holly Farms - are clucking about their new, lower-fat birds. For weeks, advertisements in newspapers and on television and radio have heralded the poultry's appearance in local supermarkets. How the chickens were slimmed down is no secret: a combination of old-fashioned breeding techniques, dietary changes and the trimming of fat from carcasses - at a cost of $2.5 million, according to Perdue. Holly Farms would not discuss costs.

A dispatch Feb. 3 about life in Sydney, Australia, referred incorrectly to New South Wales, the state of which Sydney is the capital. Although it is the most populous of Australia's six states, it is fourth largest in area.

A NEW YORK without its bagels, dim sum, souvlaki, fettuccine and arroz con pollo would be another place -certainly a lesser one. Happily, from a culinary point of view, there always seems to be another new culture on the verge of making an impression through its cuisine. Finding it can sometimes be as easy as hopping into a cab and striking up a conversation with the driver. More often than not, the city's cabdrivers are freshly arrived immigrants. Recently, as I was being shuttled by cab through Central Park, I asked the driver where he had been born, and he told me Afghanistan. Asked where he found good Afghan food in Manhattan, he replied, smiling, ''Oh, I go to Pamir when I can afford it.'' The restaurant, he said, serves genuine Afghan food, the entire staff is Afghan and reservations are recommended. ''If you do go,'' he added, ''you must try their dumplings with green onions and meat sauce.''