where the wait staff will do a decent job as a substitute for your own live-in cook You are confusing front-of-house with back-of-house staff. No, I'm not. Wh

where the wait staff will do a decent job as a substitute for your own live-in cook You are confusing front-of-house with back-of-house staff. No, I'm not. When I go to a restaurant, I talk to the wait staff and they relay my preferences to whomever is doing the cooking. I don't talk directly to the cook. There may be a better way to say what I said, but I am not confusing anything. The wait staff play a large role in making sure that picky orders turn out right and, in some cases, they do some of the work involved in putting the right meal together, though they don't cook it. I know in part because I have special dietary needs, so I generally am a picky eater who has to ask for pretty much everything I eat to be tweaked and because I have had close relatives who worked in restaurants.