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If a restaurant normally accepts credit cards, and a customer eats a meal there, then tries to pay with his valid credit card, and the cashier says the credit card system is down and they can only accept cash today, and the customer has no cash, and no easy way to get cash, can the customer legally leave without ever paying? Does the restaurant have a simple and legal way to enforce the debt?

Assume the restaurant displays signs that they accept credit cards, and gives no prior notice to the contrary. Also assume the restaurant's bank has just severed its relationship with the restaurant, so credit card payments in any form are not viable.

There is no intention to commit theft, so there is no criminal act on the part of the customer.

Even if there was a criminal act, the ability of the restaurant to detain the cusomer (citizen's arrest) is very limited in most jurisdictions.

The restaurant can ask the customer for his name and address, but there is no legal obligation on the customer to provide this. Refusal to do so, however, might be evidence of intention to avoid paying and at that point the restaurant might call the police.

The customer can leave, and the restaurant can pursue the debt through the civil courts if they have means to do so - they may have CCTV of the customer and his car registration which can be traced.

Petrol stations, where people often fill up and then realise they can't pay, usually have established "promise to pay" procedures where they take the customer's details and the customer has 48 hours to pay before police or civil enforcement action is taken.

Time to negotiate. I had this happen with a $46 tab. I told the manager that I had $21, and that the server should get a tip before the bill was paid. I also offered to take their address and send a check.

The manager accepted the $21 and agreed that the server would get $8 of it first. Possibly less risk for them than relying on me to send a check.

From a legal standpoint, they changed the payment terms mid-stream, after I sat down and ordered (contracted) and demanded payment in a specie which I did not expect. In retrospect, I thought that I should not have offered all the cash I had, and it left me in a different town, without an ATM card, and a full day ahead of me. I have not studied it recently, but signs like "no coins" and "no bills over $20" place limitations on how one can pay, and may not be legal. A place doing rather high volume of business should have change for bills over a $20 but they put the signs up after getting a large number of counterfeit bills at a festival.

However in the scenario presented, finding out that no credit cards are accepted after contracting for food seems like one which requires some flexibility.

One could walk away, but if the establishment wants to call the police, I would hang around to make your statement to the police, and explain to them that there is no intent to not pay (therefore not criminal, but rather civil). They will most likely make notes and not detain you further.