It's true that even in New York's La Cirque they sometimes run out of black dates for the foie gras, but in Israel, "we've run out of them" often means "we never had them." So that if the crab ravioli in sage butter is no longer available half an hour after the restaurant opens, you can reasonably assume that it has been unavailable for a week, and should have been erased from the menu.

It's true that in Israel waiting on tables is not considered a profession, at most it's moonlighting on the way to something better. But still it would be nice if the waiters knew by heart whether there is coriander in the red-tuna kebabs, and whether they really are made from red tuna, or whether "we've just run out" and therefore the dish is really made from grouper.

"Tom Cruise likes to give you the feeling that he works very hard," says the restaurant critic of Pnai Plus magazine, Iris Abramovich, "and the same is true of certain waiters. They want you to know how much effort they're making." This superhuman effort is reflected in an obsessive concern for the welfare of the diners ("Is everything all right? Is the food tasty?") and an obsessive clearing of dishes from the table.

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There's no question that it's nice to know that the members of the staff shower before arriving at the restaurant. On the other hand, service providers who drown themselves in eau de cologne mar the dining experience, and create a sense of baladi eggplant soaked in Issey Miyake.

If the menu is a type of mini-contract between the restaurant and the customer, then in Israel, menus are full of blatant breaches of contract. These range from dishes prepared with the wrong ingredients, like pasta carbonara made with cream, Tournedo Rossini made with artichoke hearts, or lamb kebab made from ground beef with a little lamb fat added, to crimes against the palate, such as the use of soup powder instead of a beef stock.

Another thing about menus. Restaurateurs will mortgage a house, hire a top designer for their eatery's bathrooms and invest $1 million in a chef from Cordon Bleu, but will leave the designing and printing of the menu to a nephew who happens to know how to create PowerPoint displays.

"When I see a paper menu covered in plastic, like in the army, in a restaurant where they've invested $900,000," says chef Zachi Bukshester, "that definitely makes me wonder what's going on in the kitchen."

Our participation in the Eurovision song contest has yet to convince anyone that we are in Europe, but restaurant owners insist on using an entire arsenal of pan-European terms. Telma mayonnaise becomes "aioli" (a sauce made of egg yolks, olive oil, lemon juice and crushed garlic, which must be prepared immediately before serving) and meze dishes become tapas. "The word 'tapas' refers to traditional Catalonian dishes," explains the restaurant critic for Time Out, Yuval (Job) Har-Gil. "And unfortunately that does not include okra, and certainly not Moroccan-style carrots."

"Fresh chopped salad" is in fact chopped, but it hasn't been fresh since the morning. That is a widespread ailment in Mediterranean-style restaurants. In the yuppie version they simply drown the lettuce in balsamic vinegar, and when said salad arrives at the table, it's already tired and wants to go home.

Lately a new size of beer has been added to the most common ones: 1/2 liter and 1/3 liter. It's a vague intermediate size called a "large beer," which is 400 ml and priced like the 1/2 liter. In the same spirit, a plateful of ravioli may be shrunk to two tiny stuffed pasta pockets for the same price, and the bread that comes with the carpaccio is extra. The assumption is that the customer will not notice these creative maneuvers. Har-Gil is annoyed: "In every country there is a tradition of regulation sizes for glasses," he declares. "In England, anyone who dared to serve less than a pint would have his pub burned down."

The regulation in California not to smoke even at a distance of two meters from the entrance of a restaurant may testify to the extremism of people on the West Coast, but the "smoking area," which is located one table away from the "non-smoking area" does not demonstrate any great genius either. "Anyone who smokes misses the taste of the food," says Daniel Robinson, a writer for "Lonely Planet." "And as far as the other diners are concerned, it has an effect that arouses revulsion."

Robinson draws attention to the fact that, "in the United States, in many places, there is no smoking so that the staff and the waiters will not turn into passive smokers. It's part of employee rights."

"In my own case, as a smoker, if someone at a nearby table approaches me politely and says that the smoke bothers them, I will immediately apologize and put out my cigarette. On the other hand, when someone approaches me in an area where smoking is permitted and starts to tell me what a disgusting habit smoking is or whatever, I may utter a few expletives silently to myself, but will inform them quite coldly that smoking is permitted in this area."

"In France," says Robinson, "there is no such thing as sitting down in a restaurant and not being brought a basket of fresh bread. Bread has a natural, neutral taste, and it's nice that there's something moderate and delicate that balances the strong taste of the dishes. Of course that requires ensuring the freshness of the bread, and perhaps a nearby bakery infrastructure. In Israel you have to order bread separately and to pay for it as well." The surprising thing, of course, is how on earth the French remain thin, a question that bothers mainly those who manage to finish off the basket of pitas long before the arrival of the hummus.

"In my opinion, in a hot country like Israel," Robinson explains, "they have to serve water with ice as soon as you enter the restaurant." If not as soon as you enter, perhaps after the customer asks for it. If not after the customer has asked once, perhaps after he has asked three times. "Often the waiter will remember to fill the wine glasses again and again, while the water glasses will remain empty," says Rogov.

What makes an ordinary person a chef? The answer essentially seems to be tied to the efficiency of the restaurant's public relations director. In theory, the title "chef" refers to the person who runs the kitchen. However, a chef can also be someone who has not ever taken a single cooking course, but according to (genuine!) chef Rafi Cohen, he or she has to have worked in a kitchen for at least 10 years before being able to run it professionally.

On the other hand, the title "food critic" is usually given to someone whose only training can be summed up in eating free of charge, preferably at the expense of the newspaper. "In The New York Times they don't write about a restaurant before eating there six times," explains Robinson. "It is impossible to write conclusive criticism about a restaurant after one visit."

Frequently restaurants open here that reflect a major investment, with "huge spaces designed by top designers, with a 30-meter kitchen in back, full of equipment from the flea market," according to chef Rafi Cohen. He says that according to industry standards, 65 percent of the size of the restaurant is supposed to be devoted to work spaces - the kitchen, the bar, the cash register. But with five Philip Starck lamps, who has room for petty items like butcher's block? And who needs an authentic taboun oven if the microwave can do the work?

The fashion of using "consulting chefs" works to everyone's benefit, except perhaps that of the customers. The chef makes good money, the restaurant accumulates important knowledge, and the PR people gain stardust. But from the moment that the consultant leaves the kitchen, there is no guarantee that the standards will be maintained.

"This creates a huge gap between expectations and what really happens," says Amir Kaminer, a restaurant critic for the daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth." And Rafi Cohen sums up: "If consulting worked, I wouldn't have to spend 12 hours a day in my restaurant."

Israeli diners bug their waiters, pick their teeth with toothpicks (Lancut-Leibovitz is horrified by that one), demand rare steak and then complain that it's bloody, and reserve a table for 7 P.M., arrive at 7:45, and are annoyed that the table has not been saved for them. And after all that, they're liable to be cheap about the tip.

"In most places in the world where it's customary to leave a tip," says Robinson, "it's known that you leave about 15 percent, and that's clear both to the waiters and to the customers. I don't know what would happen here if it didn't say 'service not included' at the bottom of the bill; maybe the waiters would go home with nothing. I would like to see a situation in Israel where the diners know that they have to leave a tip, and the waiters can be sure that they actually will receive it."

And on the way, if possible, let there be peace.