Dining in a restaurant is never a solitary affair. Even if you're eating alone the experience is, to borrow the buzzword, interactive. At the very least you have to deal with a waiter or waitress, possibly a wine waiter, and maybe a manager or owner as well.

This is as banal a statement as it's possible to make, and yet much follows from it. If I'm reviewing a restaurant I always pay attention to the greeting on arrival. Is it friendly? Is it immediate? Does it make me feel that I'm in the hands of professionals? Because the fact is that the meal begins here, not at the table. In fact you could argue that it begins with the manners of the person on the phone if you make a reservation. Dining, as opposed to ingesting food, is about many things, and the meal is only a part of it.

In the catering world two things have come from our booming economy; many more people are using restaurants who never have in the past, and people are opening restaurants who have had scant, if any, training in the traditional arts. When these two meet, you have a situation where no one knows what they're doing - a recipe for disaster.

Every diner has horror stories about bad service, bad food, overcharging and plain rudeness from waiting staff, but the obverse of this is that every restaurateur has stories about customers who behave badly. As I say, it's an interactive situation and one set of bad manners can bring another set of bad manners into play. But we should be clear on one thing; we're not talking about a level playing field. There is an obligation on the restaurateur to be the prime mover and there are two reasons for this. Firstly the customer is paying, and with that goes all the rights of paying the piper. Secondly the word 'restaurateur' comes from the French word meaning to restore - it's the restaurant's job description to restore you to well-being, to take away the troubles of the world and make you feel that all is well with the universe. Which is why ruffling a customer's feathers puts everything out of kilter.

Perhaps the behaviour most likely to bring restaurateurs to apoplectic rage is the simple act of not turning up for your reservation. I once knew a man who would book three or four restaurants on a Saturday night and when he met up with his guests he'd ask them which they'd prefer. He never bothered to cancel the ones that weren't selected, so they'd be left holding a table until it became clear that the booking wasn't going to materialise. If they were lucky they might get a chance to fill the table with people arriving on spec, but they could just as easily lose out. Which is, of course, why you're increasingly asked for a telephone number when booking, or in some cases a credit card - to which your meal will be billed even if you don't show. The fact is that making a booking is a contractual obligation - as indeed is accepting the prices and service charge once you've ordered from the menu.

But that's where we come to then nub of the issue. There's an old dictum that says 'the customer is always right' and it's a good one. The customer is the half of the equation who is paying, and therefore he's right. But still the question needs to be posed; what if he's a 100% wrong? What should a restaurateur do with a customer who's shouting loudly that his Vichysoise is cold? The temptation is to explain carefully that he should go forth and multiply, but that's not good business, so a professional restaurateur tries to reach an accommodation. Essentially if a customer is even 80% wrong, he's still right.

Let me get anecdotal and tell you a story from my catering past, because the tale contains many of the elements I've been discussing. Many years ago the Department of Trade and Industry brought a Chinese delegation to my restaurant for lunch. Normally these departmental lunches were organised by the protocol section of the Department of Foreign Affairs, and they were very good at making arrangements. Inter-departmental rivalry meant that on this occasion they were not involved. Before coming to me the Chinese were taken on a visit to Turlough Hill generating station, which unfortunately overran the allotted time by quite a margin. This is the point at which accomplished organisers would call the restaurant to explain that they were running late. It's not just common courtesy; it also ensures that you won't get an over-cooked meal on arrival.

The then junior minister who was hosting this lunch - a North County Dublin TD who has since found some notoriety over a number of planning issues - had made no attempt to organise a placement for his guests, and I had to make a guess at how many tables to set and how many people to put at each before they arrived. When the time finally came to sit down it became a farce, the minister moving people around once they had already been seated, and in some cases more than once. Messy, untidy and not the sort of protocol a senior Chinese delegation would expect.

To try to make the Chinese feel at ease I'd taken it upon myself to get some good Lapsang Souchong and borrowed a particularly fine porcelain tea-set from my mother that was decorated with gold. I produced this and the Lapsang after lunch to murmurs of approval from the Chinese. As I left the table, pleased with the effect of this gesture, the minister called me loudly from across the room. 'You appear to have forgotten the milk and sugar.' Biting my lip I answered, 'I'll bring them right away, minister.' The point? Well, if you're loud, obstreperous and ignorant the best you can hope for from a restaurant is cool civility. If you want respect and good service that is heartfelt, your manners must also be up to scratch.

Clicking your fingers or whistling may be a great way to catch a dog's attention, but it tends to annoy waiters who are likely to ignore you even more pointedly. Personally I find that getting up from the table and walking over to the waiter to ask for what I want tends to work well. Do it once and they will try to keep you seated by looking out for you from then on. In the same way getting up and moving towards the door is a great way to make the bill come if you've been waiting ages for it.

But what really separates the mannered from the ill-mannered is dealing with complaints. Shouting at your waiter isn't the answer. In the first place you upset the diners at other tables who may not be having such a bad time, but more importantly you run the risk of upsetting everyone at your own table. No one thanks you for destroying the even tenor of a meal - after all, a meal with friends is supposed to be a pleasurable event. A quiet word to the waiter is more effective than shouting abuse and anyway, if you shout the first time something goes wrong you've little left in the armoury should something else go awry. Besides, you should never forget that as a customer you have the ultimate sanction, which is not to pay. This is a little fraught legally speaking, but it remains the ammunition of last resort for the disgruntled punter. A friend of mine who entertains a lot has developed a technique that I thoroughly approve of; if he has a complaint to make he'll leave the table on some pretext and complain out of earshot of his guests. It works because it shows respect for his own guests, respect for other diners and it gives the restaurant the chance to behave with professionalism and put right anything that has gone wrong without embarrassment.

Anyone who eats out reasonably frequently will have learnt to assess where they are even if it's new to them. If I'm in a restaurant whose menu is full of things like lamb chops and chips, Irish stew, sirloin steak and deep-fried scampi, am I going to order the pasta? You bet I won't. It's a sure-fire recipe for disaster. If you're in a simple restaurant with a simple menu, don't pick the complicated-looking dish unless you're actually looking for a fight or disappointment. Similarly you can't expect £30 a head service when you're paying a tenner a head. You have to match your expectations to where you are and what it's costing you.

I've often heard it said that the best way to deal with a bad meal is not to return to the restaurant. I suppose it's a solution, but I don't think it's the best one. Unless you're dealing with formula fast foods, a meal in a restaurant is always going to be subject to the occasional cock-up. It's inevitable really, since we're dealing with a set of circumstances that bears a closer relationship to an art form than a science. There are so many variables involved in getting it right that things are bound to go wrong from time to time. I take this so much for granted that I tend to be surprised when everything goes perfectly. For me what differentiates a well-run restaurant from a badly run restaurant is how they deal with a complaint. If the complaint is dealt with quickly, efficiently and politely then as far as I'm concerned, it never happened and there is no more to be said on the matter. If the complaint is not dealt with, then it's time talk to management.

Both as a customer and as an ex-restaurateur I'm convinced that making your complaint known to the management is better than saying nothing and walking away disgruntled. Any restaurant that takes itself seriously will want to improve itself, and if it gets no feedback when things go wrong it can't do so. From the customer's point of view it's worthwhile as well, since the restaurant often apologises with a gesture ranging from drinks on the house to the cancellation of the bill. But there's a further plus: a culture of not accepting second best results in better restaurants all round, better food and better service - something that is already beginning to happen in Ireland.