• Host. Greets you, makes you feel comfortable, shows you to your table, delivers the menus (ladies' without prices, bien sur) and wine list, and wishes you bon appetit. Usually he also returns, a few moments later, to take your order.
• Sommelier. After the order is taken, hovers expectantly, hands often clasped before him anticipating return of the wine list (or Livre du Cave, as one restaurant Biblically named it). Should you wish advice on a wine, he gives it, but if you know what you want, even if it is chateau d'Alpo, says excellente, snaps the book shut, and whisks off to the cellar.
• Waiter. Delivers the amuse bouche, clears the setting plates, delivers the courses, explains each dish (pointing out exotic items), says bon appetit, and supervises the busboy.
• Busboy. Bread and water, changes of silverware.

When everyone does his or her job, French service is a minuet. The diner has but to frame a thought or lift an eyebrow and it is satisfied. Plates float away as if by themselves, wine and water glasses never run dry but are filled from invisible bottles, silver comes and goes.

The aristocratic French diner has been taught to expect such service as his due - they do not thank the serving staff. And France expects every waiter to do his duty, and his alone: perhaps because their functions are perfectly compartmentalized, they are blind to one another. If everyone is on his or her game, all is magical, but if someone misses, the team cannot or will not recover, and the diner sits, wine bottle visible but unreachable, while the glasses are empty and the exquisitely cooked food grows tepid.

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ã Copyright 2002 David Alexander Smith