Which of the following can't be found in fancy restaurants?

• Author: Szegedy-Maszak, Marianne
• Position: A - B - C

Why feminists should picket Washington's fancy restaurants. Which Of The Following Can't Be Found In Fancy Restaurants? a) Salmon With Dill b) Dom Perignon c) Waitresses

The tuxedos. The soft, diffused lighting that makes almost anyone look attractive. The power lawyers and power politicians, the power journalists and power lobbyists with power money sitting at that discreet table right near the pictures of the Redskins. ("He'll never get confirmed," he whispered.) The perfectly timed courses. The best wise-cracking waiters at the Palm. The ones with the Yves Montand accents at Maison Blanche. The Icelandic Arctic Char special. The all-male fleet of waiters that makes you wonder whatever happened to Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. That's what eating in most of Washington's power restaurants is all about.

It's so much a part of our culture as not to be noticed: the fancy restaurant that has everything except waitresses. Every city's got one, especially Washington, where you won't see waitresses at the rough-and-tumble, meat-and-potatoes enclaves like Joe and Mo's, Duke Zeibert's, Mel Krupin's, Gary's, or the Palm. They're not on the menu at the hushed and exquisite Le Pavillon or Maison Blanche.

But you can find women working the tables at places like the Kozy Korner Restaurant, right around the corner from the Palm. There you can have your steaming, roast turkey special ($5.75 including stuffing, potatoes, vegetable, roll, and butter) served up by Bernice ("but everybody calls me Bonnie") Stone, a waitress "in town for 46 years this August 12." She's quick to tell you that she sometimes makes $40 a day in tips for four hours of work. That plus her paycheck of about $25 a week will bring her just under $12,000 a year.

Tommy Jacomo, the manager of the Palm, is a little more reticent when the subject of money comes up. He estimates that his guys bring home "somewhere-around-seveneighthundred-a-week but I really can't discuss it." That plus a minimum wage salary, health benefits, a pension plan, and profit sharing makes the Palm, in Jacomo's words, "a dream job for a waiter. Utopia."

A dream job for a waiter. The power restaurants are not Utopia, but they undoubtedly offer good jobs. First, there's the money. While 86 percent of the 1.5 million people who wait tables in the United States are women, there aren't that many women who can make the $40,000 a year that waiters can take in at the Palm. No wonder a Labor Department study found that waiters across the country earned an average of $237 a week, while waitresses took home $168. For those graying and distinguished gentlemen who wait in the power restaurants, $237 can be the tip on a dinner for eight even if their customers pass up the Martell Napoleon with their Baked Alaska. "They make more than your boss," said Michael Bartlett, editor-in-chief of Restaurants and Institutions.

And these jobs are attractive for reasons besides the big bucks. The flexibility, the different shifts to...