Since I became a dining critic, the way that I experience restaurants has undergone some modifications. I've always tended to dissect the meal and the service, discussing what went wrong and what went right. But now even small aspects of the meal tend to get more than mentally noted. I lament that the dining room was too cold, or happily recall that music was played at exactly the right level. Lighting seems to be one issue that has popped up again and again.

During a recent review dinner, dining room lights were so dim that it was difficult to see the food. I wondered, do they realize that it's this dark in here? It seems they did. Our check was accompanied by a small pen-light to allow us to read the fine print.

Too-dark restaurants are annoyingly common. Occasionally such lighting makes me paranoid. I wonder, is the restaurant really clean? Are they hoping I won't be able to read the wine list and will accidentally order the '89 Chateau Petrus?

I've also marveled at lights so bright that you could perform surgery between courses. I can certainly tell the restaurant is pristine, but the atmosphere tends to be as jarring as the lighting.

Can't they just adjust the lights? The truth is that at a lot of restaurants, they cannot. For one thing, lighting levels are often set in advance and then controlled by one switch. If you turn up the lights in one area, they go up everywhere else, too, leaving many areas weirdly lit.

Lighting is extremely expensive, and changing it can be difficult. Even candles aren't without extra difficulties. Someone has to set up and light the candles, refill them and clean up spilled wax. And there is always the small but very real fear of fire.

That's not to take responsibility away from restaurants. In the past few years I have been consistently baffled by a strange development -- restrooms with such low lighting that you can barely see whether there's spinach in your teeth. The likeliest explanation is that the restrooms are dimly lit to prevent a "light-blindness" effect when you walk back into the extremely dark dining room. That might be a good restaurant rule of thumb. If you're worried about putting reasonable lighting in the restroom, your dining room is too dark.

If a restaurant does supplement its lighting with candles, it seems fairly reasonable to request an additional taper or two, especially if your table is particularly dim. At one local restaurant, our server told us that he simply couldn't find any more candles and let the matter drop. Since the restaurant was littered with literally dozens of different candles, this response seemed a little inadequate.

This lighting quandary may have something to do with the changing desires of restaurant guests. In the era before Zagat and the Food Network, many dined out for the sheer pleasure of having someone else do the cooking and cleaning. Good food was nice, but it wasn't necessarily the focus of the evening. Most white-tablecloth restaurants wanted to project a romantic atmosphere, and flickering candlelight was the height of sophistication.

But as people became more interested in dining out for the sake of the food as well as the atmosphere, our desires changed. We still want the lighting to be flattering, but we also want to be able to see the food. What is the point of that beautiful brunoise of vegetables or the swirl of chive oil in our soup if we can't see it? Suddenly, restaurant lighting had to be plotted like a well-constructed stage set that is going to be occupied by two stars with very different needs -- people and food.

Of course the very best restaurants control lighting as effectively and beautifully as every other aspect of dining. At The French Laundry, Thomas Keller's Napa Valley restaurant that Michelin rated with three stars, I marveled at subtle recessed lighting that not only flattered the face but also cast a perfect orb of light on each and every plate of food.

Such precision isn't always necessary, and the most important effects can be achieved with much less effort. In general, I would suggest that a dining room that is a little too bright is preferable to one that is a little too dark. And perhaps when adjusting dining room lighting, restaurant managers might be mindful of the darkest table in the house. If you don't know what table I'm talking about, you should probably try to find out. But until restaurants start paying more attention, I'll just have to hope that my eyes adjust. And carry my own flashlight.