I just have to share this article with you. It was from today's Epicure section of The Age, and I just loved it. It made me laugh quite a few times, and it's so true of what you can experience in restaurants these days.

Some of my favorite parts of the article:

 Pepper. And still it happens — the Australian equivalent of a Japanese tea ceremony, possibly taught at hospitality college. “Cracked pepper with that, sir?” With which the waiter heaves a pepper grinder the size of a telegraph pole over your shoulder, twisting its top in the same way the Queen Mother waved from the back of a Rolls-Royce...

View. ...menus the size of broadsheet newspapers and printed in curly wedding-invitation font, napery folded into Arts Centre spires or bishops’ mitres, and spherical wine glasses that bong rather than clink when toasts are made....

Yum cha. The best excuse for bad manners ever invented. What other cuisine in the world judges its success from who can make the greatest number of soy-sauce stains on the tablecloth in the shortest possible time?

Michael Shmith really tells it like it is.
So I don't get sprung for plagiarising, or something just as fun as that, the link to the full article is here: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/the-a-to-z-of-restaurant-etiquette-20091013-gu9e.html