They're pretty standard here in Japan. They look (and work) like wireless doorbells. At first it can be hard to get used to the fact that the waiter won't come over until you've pushed the button but after a while you really start to appreciate it.

Also, in the US I always felt slightly guilty calling a waiter over as if I'm calling him out on not doing his job. Here, if they don't have the doorbell thingy it's expected that you'll shout すみません！ when you're ready to order.

The other major design issue with airplanes is putting the buttons on a remote and then jamming it into the armrest next to your butt so you can accidentally hit it when you're sleeping or shifting around. It's the airplane equivalent of pocket dialing.

Japan-themed restaurants in London too, like Yo! Sushi.

A restaurant the runs like an Amazon warehouse? Where the staff are controlled by a little robotic handset.

"turn left and pick up credit card terminal. Then go to table 32." "say: 'how was your food today sir?'

Sounds fucking awful even if it does get you 10s faster service.

You basically just described Manna: http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

Welcome to The Culture.. er.. I mean The Australia Project.

I once read a poorly-written sci fi based on that exact premise. The system was called "Manna".

Come on, it wasn't that badly written, and the ideas and insight more than made up for it. I'd definitely recommend it.

Agreed, it was pretty good.

Of course once I read it, I started to wonder if I could code mana.

The author has already patented the idea.

Many restaurants in China do in fact have such a set of buttons at every table. As an added optimization, wait staff there typically use some kind of mobile devices to order food instead of using paper. I haven't seen many other countries, but I'm surprised both of these innovations aren't more prevalent here in the States.

I have seen several restaurants in Germany try those mobile gizmos but they tend to disappear after a short time: Too slow, too unflexible. Their UI is just horrible as soon as customized orders come up. Well, their UI is probably horrible in general but extra horrible when you leave the path.

As for buttons, why not follow Larry David's lead and put a bell on every table?

Slowness of the interface isn't really a huge problem, because it can still speed up service and improve efficiency.

Just last week I was sitting at a terrace located a little ways away from the restaurant itself. The waitress punched in our drink orders, but we stopped her from turning around and asked her about the specials. Our beers arrived before she finished describing them.

This place had one order-taker and one or two 'runners' who delivered and bussed. Increasing latency while taking orders isn't nice... but in this case it completely obliterated message delivery time (and a whole lot of legwork).

I guess that's the problem. The restaurants I like are rather small. They have only two or so people. I guess there is apoint when the restaurant is large enough when those mobile devices pay off.

Most restaurants in the US aren't as big as some of the chinese restaurants I've been to. The cost/benefit of having a mobile device for each waiter rather than a waiter station with a terminal would be minuscule. One thing some of the busier restaurants are doing is use pagers when there is a waiting list.