It's bad enough to have to wait on an entitled celebrity who expects you to be both invisible and telepathic. But how much more galling must it be when that same VIP turns around and complains about your service in the pages of The New York Times?

That's how some New York City waiters feel following the publication of Nora Ephron's op-ed in yesterday's Times titled, "What to Expect When You're Expecting Dinner" [sub. req.] In the piece, Ephron, a noted journalist and the screenwriter behind When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle, kvetches about every last aspect of the typical dining-out experience, from the excessive size of water glasses to the grainy texture of sea salt, which scratches her sensitive tongue. She reserves her most withering disdain, however, for waiters, who, in her view, are forever pestering customers with intrusive questions like, "Is everything all right?" and "Would you like another bottle of Pellegrino?"

Perhaps Ephron exaggerates her own fussiness for comic effect? Au contraire, say those who've served at her table. "She is just about the most obnoxious patron I've ever encountered," says one former waitress at an uptown restaurant Ephron frequents. "She expected the staff to be informed of all her idiosyncratic requirements. She once snapped at me for continuing to hold the door open for her husband [Wiseguy author Nicholas Pileggi] after she walked into the restaurant. She also got angry with the busboys for giving her a fish fork for her fish, because she thinks they're too small and difficult to use. She acted like a total bitch every time."

A waiter who worked at the same restaurant tried to be more diplomatic. "Here's what I'll say: Her husband is a very nice man. Waiting on her can be ... difficult." The ex-waiter remembered an instance when Ephron's usual waitress, who was used to her tics and knew how to anticipate them, phoned in sick. As her fill-in, he was so nervous, he spilled red wine on Ephron's table. "Nora looked like she was about to explode," he recalled, until Pileggi defused the tension with a joke. "Nick was like, 'I think we need a regime change on the tablecloth.'"

Ephron, reached in San Francisco, where she is promoting her book, I Feel Bad About My Neck, acknowledged she is frequently dissatisfied with the service at restaurants, but refused to concede she is hard to please. "I would characterize myself as an unbelievably reasonable customer, because, after all, don't we all want it the way we want it?" she says. Moreover, she insists she deserves credit for first making fun of her own dinnertime idiosyncrasies, in the form of Meg Ryan's ordering scene in When Harry Met Sally. "This is not a secret about me. Only I'm older now, so I'm even worse."

While Ephron describes her husband as "the greatest tipper on the planet," the sources Radar spoke to remembered him as merely above-average, leaving 20 to 25 percent. That's not enough, in the eyes of one waiter, who offered some advice: "If you're annoyed because people are bending over backward to give you everything you need, maybe you should stick to really bad restaurants."