Lighting in restaurants

In the last week, I have noticed the way businesses try to use light to create an inviting environment and fail miserably. I work in a relatively new restaurant and previously worked at The Cheesecake Factory at the Irvine Spectrum. When I was at Cheesecake, I would get so annoyed with the lighting during my weekend evening shifts because the restaurant would get gradually darker throughout the night, until all the lights were so low that I was tempted to curl up and sleep because I was so tired from my shift. I would often get complaints from guests about the lights be too low or not being able to read the menu. I thought that this was a problem that only Cheesecake had, and I figured that my managers thought that they were stylish or trendy. Then I started working at another restaurant and noticed the same thing. Every night at around 7 pm, the lights seem to go to half, and the restaurant gets bathed in an eery orange glow. This make the restaurant appear simultaneously sinister and cozy, depending on which shadows you look at. In the areas closer to a strong source of light, such as the tables near the patio, there are longer shadows that appear eerie and forbidding. However, in the more central areas of the restaurant where there are fewer strong light sources, the light makes the room appear cozy and almost womb-like. I would assume that this is to make the restaurant appear inviting, but honestly I do not see what the light has to do with food. More importantly, if guests are not able to see the menu, it does not matter how cozy the light is if they cannot order food. Even worse, darkness means that guests will not be able to fully observe the artistic presentation of their food, and their expensive meal will feel more like a blind taste test in darkness. Personally, I believe that the ideal lighting in a restaurant is to have one candle centerpiece on each table to get the best of both worlds - giving enough light to read the menu and establish a sense of private lit space while keeping the light from spreading and making the space feel cheap and impersonal. Guests deserve light for safety, aesthetic appreciation, and reading purposes but darkness does create an inviting sense of familiarity and mystery.