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By Naushad S. Mehta

Memere's, a Louisiana-style restaurant in Oak Park, Ill., has a loyal clientele for its rattlesnake gumbo. The New Deal restaurant in New York City's Soho is corralling herds of diners with its beaver empanada, kangaroo yakitori and black-buck antelope. Next month Fallow Deer Associates of Hudson, N.Y., will begin supplying health-food stores with prepackaged ground venison and venison burgers.

Licking their chops at Americans' growing taste for game, restaurants are now serving more of it than ever before. Food Arts, a magazine for professional chefs and restaurateurs, puts game high on its list of gastronomically fashionable items this fall. Four years ago, the Zagat survey could name just 13 New York City restaurants that served game; today there are 133.

According to Tim Zagat, whose pocket-size books rate restaurants in 14 American cities, game has taken off this season partly because of "an overall interest in finer foods." Joseph Baum, co-owner of New York City's Rainbow Room and Aurora restaurants, agrees. "Flavor is in again, and game is full of flavor," he says. "It's evocative of the past, of tradition. It's romantic." This season Aurora has set up a special game menu for its dinner guests. Last week's offerings included medallions of venison with dried fruit, saddle of hare with black- and white-peppercorn sauce and roasted Scottish grouse.

Health-conscious Americans are hunting out game because it is generally lower in calories, cholesterol and saturated fats than other meats. Game also appeals to food purists because it is raised without artificial hormones or antibiotics. People see it as "natural and of the earth," says La Toque owner-chef Ken Frank, whose venison dishes are popular at his tony Los Angeles restaurant. In Phoenix, chef Vincent Guerithault, owner of Vincent on Camelback, has developed a line of "heart-smart" game entrees. Once chefs % had to scramble to find a brace of partridge or pheasant. Not anymore. Game suppliers and game farms have sprung up across the country to meet the demand for everything from antelope to zebra. D'Artagnan in Jersey City sells two kinds of venison and four different varieties of duck, as well as fresh grouse, wood pigeon and pheasant from Scotland. Five years ago, D'Artagnan was pulling in $500,000 annually; this year it will do $7 million in business.

Eighty percent of the 1.5 million lbs. of venison sold in the U.S. comes from New Zealand, but American farmers are starting to catch up. Over the past seven years, the yearly production of farm-raised deer has increased sixfold, to 30,000 lbs. Game ranchers sell another 100,000 lbs. of wild venison. Farm venison, however, appeals to more people because it tastes milder than wild deer. "Every deer farmer sells all he has," says Raleigh Buckmaster, president-elect of the North American Deer Farmers' Association. "Restaurants are calling us all the time."

They are likely to keep calling as long as foodies like Wall Street banker Dwight Bush continue to indulge their taste for game. "It's something different from your basic pasta and pizza," Bush says. "It's an adventure."

With reporting by Edwin M. Reingold/Los Angeles