The World of Ribs : A Gnawing Hunger : Boning up: Eating bones (ribs or otherwise) is supposed to be messy. Just grab hold and sink your teeth into ‘em.

One thing I’ve learned about bones: People don’t know how to eat them.

Once I watched a big, burly man nibbling on a lamb chop so gingerly I wanted to shake him. “Dig your teeth into that bone,” I wanted to say.

My own husband once left a restaurant while I obliviously sucked the marrow out of one of those big, juicy osso buco veal bones. I didn’t notice. I had polished off my bone and wiped off the osso buco drippings that formed a second set of lips over my chin before I realized he was gone.

I knew why he left, too. To him, a woman with a bone in her teeth is not a pretty picture. He doesn’t like to see the carnivorous side of a woman. It looks dangerous. Vulturine.

I once watched with fascination an elegant woman dining at a three-star restaurant in Paris. She neatly gnawed the meat off several quail bones one by one and piled them on her plate like a pyre. Her male companion kept looking around to see if anyone had noticed the spectacle.

When I’m gnawing on a good rib or shank, I don’t care what others think. Give me a bone, any time, anywhere . . . well, almost anywhere. I once ordered pig’s feet at a bistro in Paris. The dish arrived with a single huge, gelatinous foot of a hog standing upright on the plate with a knife stuck into it. Needless to say, it was a lesson about cultures as much as about cuisines. I never returned to either the restaurant or the dish.

I would also have a hard time sucking on marrow bone at, say, L’Orangerie, although I have been tempted to use a friend’s solution. This woman dining at a German restaurant curtained her face with a napkin to chew on her beloved Kalbshaxe in peace.

My love of bones goes back to the days when my mother prepared things such as braised lamb shanks with a thick, smooth brown sauce that lingered on the bone long after the flesh was gone. There was stuffed veal breast, whose tiny ribs kept me busy chewing for hours, and lamb stew made with lamb shoulder, which provided a good round of bones that made the stew taste better than it would without the bones.

She invented short ribs with spaghetti (I think in my honor), which, to this day, I prepare on a regular basis. (The idea is to cook the ribs to the point just before the flesh falls off the bone.) And she roasted leg of lamb and served it with an exquisite rice flavored with cinnamon. When all the meat was gone, the bone became a beloved snack for me.

My mother, understanding my love of meat and, particularly, bones, pampered the practice by serving me lamb chops when everyone else in the family ate fish. I hated fish; loved chops--especially hers, with the bones charred and crisp and crackly enough to munch on. They remain my “going to mother’s house” meal. They’re served with French fries cooked in olive oil. Heaven.

A veal chop with a long, meaty bone is another great favorite. A veal knuckle with a good sauce around it is a pleasure so sublime, there are hardly words to describe the euphoria.

I used to like the jaw bone of lamb’s head, which was usually roasted. This delicacy, which now gives me the creeps, was a rare treat in Depression days, when families had little meat to eat unless it was organ meat.

In those days we’d use the jaw bone as a mock toy gun after the juicy, truly delicious cheek flesh was eaten off the bone. One head, two guns.

Not every type of bone makes it on my list, however. Chicken bones, even bones on duck or other game birds, don’t count--and don’t ask me why. Size? Chewability? Who knows?

Nor am I crazy about the kind of barbecued ribs you buy already cooked and plastered with a sticky sauce. These I discovered much later, when I came out West. Growing up on the East Coast, I don’t ever remember seeing a rib joint. The West Coast is bone country once-removed, a place to showcase regional ribs, samples from here and there--the South and Southeast, the Midwest and the West. The only ribs indigenous to California I’ve encountered come from Santa Maria, where barbecued ribs and chicken have been a tradition since the days of the rancheros. But those ribs rely on the natural juices of the meat for flavor--not sauce.

To my way of thinking, sauce on ribs usually messes up the works. They overpower the ribs in flavor and texture and make eating them a chore.

As a result, I don’t generally seek out barbecued ribs on a menu. I seek out short ribs, kosher-style, like the ones you find at the Grill. I go for oxtails. I can’t wait to try the pig’s knuckles again at Le Dome on a chilly winter’s night. There’s the exquisitely simple veal chop at Morton’s, and an equally satisfying butterflied veal Milanese, with the bone intact, at Toscana in West Los Angeles. The Indonesian lamb rack at Trader Vic’s has become a birthday tradition. And, when it’s in season, Emilio’s in Los Angeles serves a succulent roast boar that reminds me of my first taste of roast boar with rib chops juicy and large at Enoteca in Florence. What a treat.

Then there is choucroute garni, which I first experienced at Brasserie Lipp in Paris. I all but fainted when I got to the pork chop. I still have dreams about the Lipp. About the chop. About bones.