The Dining with Notebook Manifesto outlines an ingenious way to get a better dining experience, with some effort and preparation:

Because I’m a bit of a food-geek, I always had a notebook to take down my observations in text and drawings. I semi-noticed that the chefs and staff would become aware of my scribbling in the notebook and that the level of dialogue and service would go up – but it never quite surfaced in my mind why this was happening. It was not until one chef finally asked me what magazine I wrote for that the light bulb clicked on – they thought I was a critic. Cool.