Well-known tracks, he suggested, can be useful. But some feeling of lift or transcendence is essential. (He cited the jazz-harp music of Alice Coltrane and Dorothy Ashby as examples of music that does not go wrong.) Also, a great playlist for your customers is not equal to the music you listen to for own purposes. “I draw the line,” he specified, “at something I might listen to at home, which might be bleak and dystopic.”

Brooks Headley, the chef of Superiority Burger in the East Village, and a musician himself — he has played drums in punk bands since the early ’90s — sent an iPod around to some discerning friends so they could load it up with their suggestions. “Nothing too moody or serious,” he cautioned them. They took his request seriously, and he likes not knowing everything that plays. (A hit in his restaurant: the album “Rock and Rollin’ With Fats Domino,” played in its entirety, all 29 minutes.)

Frank Falcinelli, a chef and partner at Prime Meats and the Frankies restaurants in New York, dreads restaurant-music clichés, and has developed ways to avoid them: playing original versions of songs made much more famous by covers, or playing deep cuts from well-known popular records. For instance: “Moonlight Mile,” from the Rolling Stones album “Sticky Fingers,” but not “Brown Sugar.” (Please, not “Brown Sugar.”)

Siobhan Lowe, manager of the restaurant (Reynard) and bar (The Ides) in the Wythe Hotel in Brooklyn, hired the sound-design firm Gray V to make its varied and frequently updated playlists. She will give instructions — “make a playlist for a rainy afternoon in the Ides that would not freak out my dad but that music nerds will be impressed by” — and then lets the experts do their work. Like Mr. Falcinelli, she has seen the seductive power of the deep cut over her customers: Her example was a live version of Talking Heads’s “The Big Country.”

I asked Mr. Sakamoto whether the exercise of creating a restaurant playlist was as simple as choosing music he liked. “No,” he said. “In the beginning, I wanted to have a collection of ambient music — not Brian Eno, but more recent.” He came to the restaurant and listened carefully as he ate. He and his wife agreed that the music was much too dark in mood.

“The light is pretty bright here,” Ms. Sora said. “The color of the wall, the texture of the furniture, the setting of the room, wasn’t good for enjoying music with darker tones, to end your night. I think it depends not just on the food or the hour of the day, but the atmosphere, the color, the decoration.”