Daily News "Unless you are at Marcello's Restaurant in Ridgewood, NJ - where each menu is a one-of-a-kind art collage mounted on a wooden painter's box that weighs about 4 pounds. God forbid you forget your glasses and you have to hold the menu close to your face, because you'll feel it in your biceps in the morning. The unusual menus were all handcrafted by Argentine owner Marcello Czernizer. It's debatable whether these are art, but they are definitely conversation pieces in this tiny Bergen County community of 25,000. And, in a small town that boasts no fewer than 61 restaurants, anything that will get people talking about yours is a good thing. It takes Marcello about two weeks to complete each menu, which opens like a book and is the size of a backgammon board. Inside. a million little tchotchkes have been sprinkled and shellacked among the dish descriptions. Said tchotchkes include seashells, dried porcini, postage stamps and miniatures of just about everything but the kitchen sink: garlic bulbs, rolling pins, olive-oil bottles, anchors, fans and train compartments. It was Marcello's love of model trains that spurred the idea. He was at an arts and crafts store one day when he spotted the smooth painter's boxes and thought they were the perfect size for a menu. Each menu costs about $100 in materials and takes two weeks to produce, but collecting the decorations is a year-round obsession. Although the restaurant seats about 60, only 25 menus are in circulation. That can be a problem since some patrons, presumably those who've run out of conversation, hang onto theirs throughout dinner for entertainment purposes. The menus are so elaborate, Marcello can only change them every two or three years, He's on his third series, and the next collection is slated for January 2003. On one hand, it means the chef cannot cook to the seasons or get spontaneous in the kitchen. On the other hand, prices don't budge for three years. So many customers are skeptical when Marcello tells them he created the menus himself, he has taken to signing and dating each one as though it were a canvas. Two menus have gone AWOL, so when Marcello opened the terrace, where it's harder to keep an eye on ill-intentioned patrons, he had paper menus printed. It makes things a heck of a lot easier when someone wants a menu faxed."