The recession has heightened already-fierce competition among restaurants for diners’ dollars, and Paul Paz believes service is one of the few arenas in which similar eateries can distinguish themselves.

“A hamburger is a hamburger is a hamburger,” says Paz, a waiter at Oregon’s Oswego Grill, who has served as a restaurant consultant in the Pacific Northwest for more than a decade. “So what’s happened is, service has become a deal-breaker.”

Yet despite the importance of service, programs dedicated to teaching the skill have traditionally failed. FareStart, which has provided culinary training to more than 3,500 disadvantaged job seekers, discontinued its front-of-house program when it moved to its current location in 2007. “We focus more on the areas that have the greatest need and demand from the community, which has always been the culinary program,” FareStart spokesperson Christina Starr says.

But waiter-training programs still occasionally pop up. The New Orleans Times-Picayune recently reported on one launched by Tyrone Howard, a former server who knows 722 different napkin folds and the polite way to handle a drunken guest. “I see it as a dying art,” Howard told the paper. “Before I leave this world, I want to mass-produce waiters.”

Howard’s dream notwithstanding, Paz predicts waiter training will continue to be conducted primarily on the job. While restaurant serving is so lucrative that Paz estimates about five percent of his colleagues have significant real-estate investments, server school has little appeal. “Even though I can make $100,000 a year, waiting tables is really not accepted as a legitimate career path,” Paz says.

The degradation of the profession’s status has led many amateurs to think they can handle the rigors of waiting tables. “With the economy, people are coming back to the industry with the attitude ‘I used to do this in college; I can do this,’ ” Paz says. “No, you can’t.”

Other factors affecting the overall quality of service include inadequate continuing-education sessions for dining-room staffers and an increase in tip-pooling since the Ninth Circuit Court upheld its legality last year. “We’ve always been told, ‘The harder you work, the more you get,’ ” Paz says. “Under tip-pooling, we’re being told ‘The harder you work, the more you have to share.’ “

Still, Paz says, the ultimate responsibility for good service lies with a restaurant’s owner, who is often also the chef. That’s why programs such as the Oregon Culinary Institute have hired instructors to teach chefs how to manage the guest experience. Students who’d rather never leave the bake shop are taught how to properly take orders and present dishes.

“If you get bad service, it’s on the owner,” Paz says. “They’re the ones who put these people on the floor. They have to invest the time and energy in training on a daily basis.”

hraskin@seattleweekly.com