September 23, 1987

LEAD: LUNCH time at Nostalgia U. Bound up the stairs, go through the doors, get in line, grab a tray, scoop up knife, fork and spoon, take a glass and then . . . the steam table: clouds billowing up around trays of mystery meat, ghosts of vegetables past and other indescribables. If you are lucky, the glass in front is fogged, sparing you the trauma of seeing the meal until it is on your plate.

LEAD: President Ali Khamenei of Iran rebuffed President Reagan today by failing to accept the United Nations Security Council's call for a cease-fire in the war against Iraq.

LEAD: NEW ENGLAND, the home of baked beans and boiled dinners, has lately become as chauvinistic about its food as California or Texas. Nowhere is this chauvinism more keenly felt than in the region's best restaurants.

LEAD: FOR the first two weeks that she wore her hair in tight braids swept into a pageboy silhouette, Cheryl Tatum, a restaurant cashier at a Hyatt hotel in suburban Washington, received compliments. Then a supervisor told her to pull the braids into a bun to comply with Hyatt's dress code.

LEAD: A 35-year-old transit police officer was fatally wounded last night in a shootout between six officers and two heavily armed men outside an abandoned building in the East New York section of Brooklyn, the authorities said.