Hi, I’m Sue and I Won’t Be Your Waiter Tonight : Dining: Women hold chef and management jobs at top restaurants, but males serve, despite discrimination pleas.

Women own, manage and are high-profile chefs at some of America’s top restaurants, but when it comes to European-style fine dining establishments, they often are barred from holding lucrative serving positions.

Industry experts say the no-women policy remains standard in many elegant restaurants where tuxedo-clad waiters are considered part of the prestige of upscale dining.

At issue, they say, is at what point the customary service expected by diners becomes discrimination. And is it still unlawful if women are hired as managers at those same restaurants but do not even apply to be servers?

Cases brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the American Civil Liberties Union and others argue that the male-only wait staff policy is discrimination no matter who runs the restaurant, what diners consider to be luxurious service and whether or not women seek the jobs.

The latest salvo was fired by New York Atty. Gen. Eliot Spitzer, who sued the Cipriani restaurant family in late August for denying women jobs that can generate more than $95,000 annually. The family’s U.S. restaurant company is 100%-owned by Italian corporation Cipriani.

The lawsuit quoted the manager of two of the family’s expensive Manhattan restaurants as telling female applicants that the Ciprianis do not employ women as waitresses in New York or in their other restaurants throughout the world.

The suit estimates that a dinner for two at Harry Cipriani, the defendants’ flagship 5th Avenue restaurant, averages $120. With tips ranging from 15% to 20% of the meal’s price, a waiter can earn about $367 in eight hours.

“We think we have been unfairly singled out by the attorney general,” said Marshall Bernstein, a lawyer for the family. “We don’t think we’ve broken any law.”

This case is just the beginning of Spitzer’s attack on discriminatory practices by upscale restaurants, said Juanita Scarlett, a Spitzer spokeswoman. “There will be other suits probably in the next few weeks.”

Tim Zagat, publisher of the Zagat restaurant surveys, said the policy tends to be more of a problem in French, Italian and Spanish restaurants and in upscale steakhouses where servers have traditionally been men.

The practice did lead the EEOC to investigate a number of famous restaurants in the early 1990s, and it filed suit against a handful, including the Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas and Joe’s Stone Crab in Miami Beach.

Mansion won its case, arguing that it could not hire more women because qualified female servers rarely applied.

Joe’s, which is among the nation’s 10 top-grossing restaurants, made similar arguments but lost in the trial court. Last year, a federal judge ordered it to pay more than $150,000 in lost wages to four women who sought serving jobs.

Joe’s has appealed and oral arguments are scheduled Wednesday.