For real? When I go out to dinner with friends, or for that matter just with my wife, I want to enjoy conversation with my food. Loud restaurants are a grade-A misery.
1
Here's the mistake: "in most restaurants, the music is mere accompaniment to the crowd. Restaurants are loud because we’re loud". It's music that is the problem, not natural sound of conversation, cutlery and waiters.
1
Noise levels in a restaurant should absolutely be part of a review, if service, prices, accessibility, and interior design are. Even when business is slow, a look at the decor and a few minutes listening to the level of ambient sound can give a diner a sense of the average noise level when the restaurant is busier. For those who enjoy that artificially produced aura of “liveliness,” they’re welcome to patronize the establishment. For those of us who prefer a calmer atmosphere, we’ll know to steer clear.
2
It's interesting to hear Pete Well's take on noise. Personally, I think people are okay with conversations, even tables for ten, but I've been in restaurants that are NOT too crowded but still too loud. We need more sound absorbing surfaces. This is why a private room for parties is so desirable - you can hear your friends and family!
I gave up on your defense of noisy restaurants half way through the column. I'm not young but my hearing is fine. A group of 4 couples went out to dinner together one Friday night. We were seated in a round table in proximity to the bar. Open concept, bar in the middle of the floor. It was so noisy that we couldn't hear the person sitting next to us. It was so noisy that even shouting didn't help. Basically, we ate our meal in self imposed silence because it was useless to talk. Now if you enjoy that sort of atmosphere, go for it. We don't and we never went back.
4
The author makes some interesting observations. However as we age our auditory processing declines and one of the problems is the inability to hear in noise. The problem is that a favorable signal/noise ratio is required for older adults (males over 40 and females over 50) with normal peripheral hearing. Most restaurants have terrible acoustics and we will often go before the restaurant gets crowded.
When you can't hear the people at your table I don't care how good the chef is, or how lovely the ambiance, it simply isn't worth the money to eat out.
My wife and I vehemently disagree with this article. Even if the food is good, not being able to have a conversation because of the "music" (usually bad music) wastes the evening.
I will go as far as saying that i like going to McDonald just because there is no music there (usually).
1
I am happy for you and those who support your feelings about going to restaurants are so loud that the best you can do for a conversation with your friends is too yell louder than those around you or sit and stare at each other. I go to restaurants to eat, drink and share a conversation, not to listen to 20 from strangers around me. I choose to stop going to such restaurants, along with 6 to 8 friends at a time and will choose not to go with friends if they invite me to one I know is LOUD. The only time I will to go those is if there is and outside dining area. The least that a restaurant should be required to do is post the descible level of it so I can not bother to make a reservation. If enough of those of us who do not want a night of being silent and loosing our hearing refuse to frequent them they will end up closing as it is a tough business in any case.
1
The noise of which people complain when they complain about noisy restaurants is NOT the sound of enjoyment. It is the clatter of steel pans on iron stove grates, the clank of flatware slung against stoneware in busing trays, the click of high heels against stone, uncarpeted floors, & yes, too-loud music with jarring sounds. It is all those sounds which reverberate around one in *modern, smooth, reflective surfaces* without being absorbed or allowed to decay naturally, & *interfere with* being heard unless one speaks in a loud voice. It is those sounds that used to be dampered in older restaurants, where plenty of enjoyment was to be had. People “having a good time” don’t necessarily shout unless in very noisy settings.
I long for a restaurant where diners all used “indoor voices” again. That used to be the norm. Now it’s difficult to impossible to find, especially in big cities. There are several reasons beyond mode. One is that many design choices have been made to hurry people along, to make them feel rushed so that they finish eating and move along to clear the space and make room for another service. Another is because some people, apparently including the author, associate noise & shouted conversation with those other public venues of fun: nightclubs & discos. But I do not go to nightclubs to eat dinner & relax with friends, & I do not go to restaurants to get excited & jazzed up; what is good for the club scene is bad for relaxation, digestion, & conversation.
The author misses MY point when it comes to noisy restaurants. I live near a popular mom and pop spot, enjoyed a local new Italia place, and a cafe whose success I laud. These few examples reflect a trend. They weren't less popular before they moved, renovated, or redecorated. They aren't more packed now. But they are louder.
Wood or laminated floor surfaces traded for stained concrete. Banquettess traded for metal chairs. To scrape on concrete. Tables traded for metal high tops. More glass, metal, stone, concrete surfaces. The acoustics of the place became noxious when every vestige of cozy became "dated" and sound absorbing surfaces went to the landfill. I have no objection to crowds and music and fun. It needn't be a cacophony. It's not me. I was disappointed in "night life" as soon as I was old enough to try it: stinky, obnoxious, and nothing like the sophisticated stuff TV and movies led me to expect. It's not aged ears. I can still hear. And I can hear the difference between spaces meant for actual socializing and those meant to just give an impression of liveliness-- loud even on a slow night. I am not fooled. I still prefer a humane ambience over what amounts to middle school cafeteria hubbub. The noise of restaurants is less about the music and conversations than it is about poor acoustic choices. Go eat in a garage or hangar. Or under that commuter line.
2
I was surprised to see there was no mention of the role of interior architecture in this article. Aural qualities of spaces are very often not at the top of the design agenda. Who is picking finishes? Who designs the layout? Who coordinates the two to speak to all five senses? Are we slaves to dashing digital renderings which satiate the eye but which are deaf to ear or indifferent to the touch? Juhani Pallasmaa, among others, should be required reading at architecture and design schools.
Why do many older commenters seem to feel called upon to apologize because noise bothers them more now? They're just as entitled to their preferences as younger customers.
2
I'm not apologizing and I can hear just fine. I simply do not see any reason to go out to eat with friends or spouse and then eat in self - imposed silence because the restaurant is so loud it is impossible to speak without shouting and even then, the other person may not understand you. If I want to eat in silence, I can do it at home.
As a two-time restaurant owner, I find it hard to believe that nowhere in this long digression is there any mention of the fact that decibel levels are DESIGNED INTO most well-planned restaurants. Levels are chosen to match the target clientele and achieved by conscious choices in materials and layout.
If a restaurant's noise level is unappealing to you, it's most likely because the restaurant has been designed for someone else.
2
The Times is surely welcome to my voice, but I don't believe that fellow diners appreciate my having to raise it in order to reach across the table. Bright and bouncy with the music turned to max. is not the formula which allows for a nice social evening with good cuisine and and stimulating conversation.
4
A much younger work colleague once invited me out for drinks. The "hip" place we went to had music so loud that I struggled for two hours to read my friend's lips (I was in my early 50s and not at all hard of hearing). I literally understood about 20% of what she said and we were both yelling. That is insane. I don't understand today's young people.
3
Comal in Berkeley has a brilliant approach, https://meyersound.com/news/comal/
Nope sorry - completely disagree. There is a happy medium with noise and there are plenty of ways to design for it. I won't dine at restaurants that hit a certain level for my sanity. When I walk into a place and see EVERY surface reflects sound I'll turn around. The other aspect of this that I don't believe is touched on is accessibility. I have a father wears hearing aids - dining out is getting more and more difficult for us to enjoy as a family. I'm not saying make a space quiet and awkward - but use smart solutions to allow for basic conversations and diffusing of noise. Every material has a number attached to it for sound absorption and reflection - designers / owners should be conscious of that.
6
Much as I enjoy Pete Wells reviews, I think he is off base on this issue. When I dine with others I wish to converse with them easily. Too often the room's acoustics, occupied tables nearby, and/or loud music prevents this. And many of my older friends have hearing difficulties to boot. Mr. Wells dines out professionally, not like the rest of us, who do so for enjoyment, social and culinary. But WHY does he like restaurant noise? Perhaps it helps the boredom and disappointments he must experience as he keeps track of the many dishes he samples. In any case for the vast bulk of his readers who are, unlike him, very disturbed about noise, he could report sound levels at the busiest time in a restaurant, say Saturday night at 8pm. This would help provide a consistent comparison among establishments. He doesn't even have to dine at a place then. Only show up to see how loud the place is.
3
Great article! If some are bothered by restaurant noise they can wear earplugs or move to Florida. Perhaps the dining room in their retirement community will be quiet enough.
1
If one's server has to put their ear in one's face to comprehend one's order, it's too loud. And not very apetizing.
I also suspect a kind of group hearing loss from being constantly exposed to loud places, necessitating ever more shouting to hear or be heard. And I have witnessed infants with headphones on in some places. It's nuts.
Finally, if I'm dropping premium money for a dinner, I don't want the decibel level making my ears bleed.
6
If one does not like the cacophony of restaurants, then eat at home and withstand the ear-shattering sounds of the city like garbage trucks banging, slow moving ambulances with their deafening sirens, or perhaps the non-stop honking of horns in non-horn blowing streets. Even better is a fire truck blowing their air horns and really loud sirens because the traffic from 9th Ave to 1st Ave is at a standstill.
Cross sensory blocking is a fact (eg, loud noise can block pain)....meaning it ALSO blocks your sense of taste.
Loud restaurants are fine for people who want them....mostly meaning children or recently children. The rest of us HATE it.
4
When the noise includes every piercing clatter of silverware and plates, that's when you know the acoustics stink and no attempt was made to make it a more pleasant noise level. A really clueless column.
7
My biggest noise complaint comes from music. I'm rarely put off by normal conversation although the one really loud guy or screaming/crying child can be a drag. I agree to an extent that music adds to the ambiance and can improve the overall atmosphere. However I feel like unless your in a dance club, there is no reason that I shouldn't be able to hear conversation over music or that I have to increase my normal volume to compensate for the music's.
3
Why go to a restaurant with friends if you can't have a conversation? Noise is my number 1 restaurant complaint.
9
This is ridiculous. Background music is OK, but loud noise that makes it hard to chat with dining companions serves no good purpose at all. Full stop. Period.
5
I AVOID RESTAURANTS THAT ARE THE AURAL EQUIVALENT OF THIS.
13
When I spend my time and money to dine in a restaurant with a companion or friends I want good food, nice ambience, and a respite from my daily grind. I enjoy lively conversation and laughter. I do not need manufactured cacophony to stimulate bar bills and turn tables.
8
Your comment about the wonderful noise of offices hit a mark I had forgotten existed. Now "retired" I remember the sound of people on the phone and talking with one another as the very essence of work life. At one point a few years ago I had my own firm and wondered aloud why I wasn't hearing that din. After all, I depended on it to know what was going on! Everyone looked at me strangely and I realized that some generational line was crossed.
2
Some of us always want "a dining room where we can speak and be heard without resorting to pantomimes." And I'm old enough to remember when restaurants provided such dining rooms, often with the aid of tablecloths, carpets, sound-softening ceilings, and padded chairs. Restaurants now choose hard, flat surfaces to increase the din and make them sound popular, buzzy, or like rock venues. When I walk into a restaurant where I won't be able to converse with my friends or family, I usually suggest we go somewhere else where we can talk.
6
I quite like the heady, chatty buzz of our local Italian restaurant, it’s the sound of people enjoying themselves. What really gets my goat though is the recently opened small chain restaurant that insists on playing music at ear-splitting levels in order to appear ‘cool’. It’s not cool, it’s horrible. I asked a staff member if they could possibly turn it down a notch as my friend and I had to shout across the table. The answer was ‘no’; the waitress apologised, she said the owners had specified the volume and staff were not allowed to alter it. “Are the owners here?” I asked, no they weren’t they only visit once a month when the restaurant is closed to the public. Hmmmm!
7
I can't stand either extreme. If all you hear is the clinking of cutlery, it's uncomfortable. If you spend the entire meal not conversing because you can't hear your companion, it's pointless. And these environments create feedbacks; in the quiet room nobody wants to be first to break the silence, and in the loud room, you've passed a kind of audio event horizon where nothing can bring the decibels down.
6
I am 72 years old and became profoundly deaf in one ear some 30 years ago as a result of an auto immune response that attacked the cochlea of my left ear. Auditory experts will tell you that this condition (Monophonic hearing) makes it virtually impossible for me or anyone else with the same impairment with or without a hearing aid to distinguish foreground from background sounds, or to localize the direction of a sound source. The high ambient noise levels that seem to predominate in present day restaurants make it virtually impossible for me to communicate with anyone whether near me or at the end of the table. Apart from my impairment or my fellows it seems that individuals today simply aren’t comfortable in quiet environments be it urban gathering places or wilderness campgrounds. I long for the days when I could sit in a dark quiet restaurant and converse with those in my party at a comfortable and discreet volume. sadly it seems that those days are long since passed away.
2
If a host/hostess can't hear what I am saying when I arrive due to the noise in their restaurant I take it as a good sign to turn around and go find another place to spend my money.
7
My husband and I always look for restaurants featuring live piano during dinner. People still talk but the presence of of non-amplified music is a good indicator of a reasonable noise level. (Not the same as a piano bar! Different atmosphere!)
2
I disagree with Peter Wells that noise is a problem that cannot be addressed and that diners must accept. The "noise" which ultimately forces everyone to speak at higher volumes has two sources. The first is the practice at many restaurantst of playing music loudly. They do it perhaps for the staff's enjoyment or because they think that a quiet place feels eerie. The second source are the diners who must speak over the music. Their volume must be overcome by other diners.
And of course since many people now consider the outdoors an extension of their living rooms, a table of six generates loud audio when a person at one end sees no issue communicating with a someone at the other end... by yelling. No server wants to intervene and lose out on their tips. (This entitlement problem also exists in movie theaters where some people feel free to talk and turn on their brightly-lit phones mid movie.)
I have walked out of (and not returned to) casual restaurants that refused to lower the volume of the music that began the noise escalation. If saving on the expense of accoustic surfaces is important, restaurants should not exacerbate the situation with loud music that everyone must speak over.
6
I evaluate restaurants based on noise level. if the noise level is uncomfortably loud, I won't come back, regardless of the quality of food and reviews. Quality of food and service is not a substitute to physical uncomfort.
9
I often choose a restaurant by the know noise level. If I want to yell, I'll stay home with my three noisy sons. If I want a pleasant evening out, I'll find a restaurant w/out loud music.
10
I love the "it hasn't hurt me yet attitude" towards noise. It is like excessive exposure to the sun. There is an unavoidable price to pay, which won't come due until it is too late.
I am a senior citizen surrounded by people who are hard of hearing. I have lost some hearing, but have always been protective of it and have better hearing than most in my age group.
I take Zumba with an instructor in her 40s who blasts the music. I wear ear plugs during the class. She says she doesn't mind the loudness.
Just like this reviewer kind of likes the noisy restaurants and thinks measuring decibels is pointless because it varies from day to day and hour to hour.
There are no free lunches. Your hearing is paying a price over the years of loud noise. You will join the group of senior citizens who cannot hear.
9
Some smooth background music is elegant. Nine Inch Nails on full blast, not so much. Don't get me started on Disneyworld.
5
This is what loud restaurants have done to me: I hire my own chef to cater my small dinners. Maybe 6 people total. In my home. The meal is planned out in advance and both the chef any myself plan on what to serve, in fact we frequently try some dishes before hand. And yes, I do pay for all these extras. WE choose the wine and flowers. It is a very pleasant way to entertain. I have hired Michelin 3 star chefs to dudes that do the BEST STREET TACOS around. There is no loud noise, we can all hear ourselves talk and enjoy each others company. It is wonderful. For those of you wanting to try this, start with ordering excellent take-out and re-serving it at your home. No chef or food expense this way. The food will be fantastic, and you will enjoy the company of your friends. If you use a chef, ask them to sit at the table with you. They LOVE the attention and your guests love to talk and learn about food. No more noisy restaurants for me.
5
@Per Axel: Sure thing. And flying on commercial airlines is so unpleasant; that’s why I charter a private jet. Driving in rush hour traffic is terribly stressful; that’s why I own a Bentley and retain a chauffeur. Neighbors are a real pain; that’s why I have my estate in the Hamptons with plenty of pricey real estate surrounding the residence.
Just wow.
4
A good article Mr Wells. I go to all sorts of restaurants all the time and enjoy the quiet and the noisy, in groups and on date night and there are restaurants that absolutely need the buzz of noise to create an atmosphere and those that don’t. When the owner/manger gets it right it adds to the experience as much as a carefully chosen wine list or good service.
Well, this was a very lengthy article defending the authors’ premise, but he entirely missed what should be of primary concern about noise in restaurants. Patrons are in a noisy restaurant a couple of hours on occasion (unless they are a bar fly, in which case they have problems other than noise to worry about). Employees are there 8 to 12 hours a day, 5 to 7 days a week. Noise for them is a workplace hazard.
Before indoor smoking regulations, arguments similar to what Wells’ makes about noise were made about smoke. Now the notion of dining in a smoke-filled restaurant is unthinkable. Workers deserve a safe, healthful working environment; this cannot be left to the discretion of restaurant owners and managers. Noise levels in restaurants should be regulated and those regulations enforced.
18
I disagree with what Wells is asserting. When I go out to eat, it is of course by choice. I go out with people I choose to spend time with, in conversation and enjoying good food together. If I can’t hear what the communal conversation is around the table, I won’t go back. The “hype” of American restaurants is indeed a thing as other reviewers have pointed out. Bring back reasonable sound levels and let us break bread peacefully, with music as a background and not the main course.
12
If the loudness is simply coming from the other patrons, it's one thing; if it's coming from a sound system turned up to 11 like a nightclub, it's entirely different. I go to a lot of Korean BBQ places in Dallas/Fort Worth. They can attract many large parties of diners talking and laughing as they cook their own meat on inset grills in the tables. That's fine. There are ventilation hoods above the grills, and they contribute to the sound level. That can't be avoided. These restaurants also tend to play K-pop very loudly, as if it were a nightclub, and this can inhibit conversation. I don't mind the music but I wish it weren't quite so loud sometimes.
4
Noise is good because it means that people are out having a meal with family and friends and actually talking to each other instead of having their heads down looking at their phones. If you go out for a meal with somebody and you both can't talk to each other but only to somebody who isn't there (whether actually talking or emailing or texting), then you 2 have a problem and should have your order to go and stop taking up a table.
I am a speech-language pathologist working with adults and children with hearing loss. I spend countless hours - the costs of which are shouldered by New York City Early Intervention, the New York City Department of Education, Medicare, and private insurance companies - providing auditory training to people who can only hope to one day be able to sit in one of these restaurants and share a meal with friends.
Because of what I know about the harmful and predictable effects of noise exposure on hearing, I limit the time I spend in these places and invested in custom earplugs so I can go to noisy restaurants and bars with friends. They laugh when I protect myself from the silent disease that is noise-induced hearing loss, and unfortunately, I feel it is articles like these that make the silence and stigma around hearing loss persist. While I understand that those who, for now, don’t experience hearing loss see excessive noise only as an annoyance or perhaps even an added sensory experience, I hope that one day restaurants cater to the hearing needs of everyday adults and children the same way they do to vision, since no one is writing an article on the defense of small-print menus and lack of lighting.
16
Being a former restaurant owner, I've seen over the course of 10yrs no one is really talking to each other anymore. Except those who grew up knowing how to carry a conversation. A majority of diners are taking pics to post on social media or texting. This is the new dining experience and the trend is here to stay. Given the state of profit margins, a loud and busy restaurant is better then quite and barely making it.
I guess restaurant owners can’t “hear” what their guests are saying, or screaming. The shear volume of commenters here agree on the same thing, ”turn it down!”
It is perplexing that the restaurant industry lags so far behind in creating an overall dining opportunity that seeks to impart an enjoyable and memorable experience.
I will look forward to when restaurant trends begin valuing and attending to their guests’ needs and provide hospitable environments.
8
When I was young and glamorous and competitively dating, I would have given the thumbs down to any restaurant that wasn’t as loud as a stadium during a winning home game. I wanted to eat dinner at 10pm and I couldn’t get enough bang. Not that we’re much subjected to wild chaos given that the husband and I are That Couple - the one sashaying into a fabulous restaurant to enjoy a luxurious meal promptly at 5pm and should a patron at the bar call out a gentle greeting to an arriving friend, my husband rolls his eyes and I think, “What am I doing in this madhouse?!” Then we look at each other knowingly and laugh because we’re such old stogies anymore. Oh, how I miss being young...sigh.
19
@hey nineteen A stogie is a cigar butt.
1
I am an avid "SF Foodie" and I also worship at the altar of the NYT. Thus, I adore your Food section.
But this piece was obnoxiously, offensively, and shockingly insensitive.
How nice that Mr. Wells can enjoy the "vibrancy" of a noisy restaurant! Like you, my ideal evening involves great food with close friends. But over the past 5+ years, as the majority of restaurants have gotten - yes...much louder, my anticipation of a wonderful time has turned to dread.
You see, I have moderately impaired hearing, and wear hearing aids...along with about a gazillion other baby boomers.
Forget the fact that the ubiquitous restaurant design of recent years (consisting mainly of cement, wood, and metal, which I refer to as "hardscape,") is typically lacking in beauty and creativity. The rejection of fabric of any type - tablecloths, carpet, drapery, as well as plants guarantees deafening reverberations of the natural sounds of cooking, conversation, and (ugh) music.
I pray for the end of this trend...and for Mr. Wells to wake up and hear the espresso machine!
18
Does Mr. Wells dine alone? Or does he dine with others? It’s much easier to tolerate a higher noise level if one is not trying to have a conversation.
10
Shouting at your dining companions and failing to be heard is intolerable. Shouting at your dining companions and being heard is slightly better. I won't return to places that force either on me.
It's one thing for a restaurant to be "vibrant". It's another for it to sound like a steel mill. Pete is simply wrong about this.
Once the "background" music reaches a certain level diners have to compete with it. They start to shout. The more diners there are shouting the worse this gets. You see this effect if someone drops the level of the music even slightly. All of a sudden everyone realizes they are screaming and they lower their voices.
13
I've been in restaurants so noisy that I've had to write out my order - or, more accurately, type it on my iPhone. That's absurd. Dinner conversation is one thing, and joyous it may be. That loud penetrating music is not part of a pleasant, joyful dining experience. If I can't place an order in a normal tone of voice (never mind talk to my dining companions), it's already become unpleasant.
I think Pete Welles is way off with this one.
13
Utter nonsense! When a restaurant is playing music so loud you have to shout to be able to talk to the person next to you it's not because we like to "raise our voices." It's because the music is too loud!
Yes, of course there are plenty of restaurants where the volume of conversations rise as the size of the crowd grows and that truly is part of the ambiance, but to deny that there are restaurant that are purposefully designed to be loud is ignoring well established research.
12
Gone are the carpets , comfortable padded booths and relaxing environments.
The new concrete and steal buildings with ridged tables and barstools are the cause of noise pollution, and I avoid them.
My number one criteria for dining is the noise level.
9
NYC should not allow anyone to stay open past 1am unless there are no residences above. There is already so much noise in NYC . So many have terraces and never use them due to pollution and noise. Why are bars allowed to stay open until 4am if people reside above the bars. Stop the nonsense..
2
I’ve lived with severe hearing loss for more than 40 years
and know how hard it is to have conversations in noisy places. I suggest anyone who is interested in how noise affects hearing, read this article from the CDC. Then decide whether you want to keep eating at restaurants that are loud.
https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/hearing_loss/how_does_loud_noise_cause_hearing_loss.html
4
Your right to swing your fist--or your noise--ends where my ear begins. It also reminds me of the way smokers in restaurants, or airplanes, used to say, "Don't like it? Why don't you go elsewhere?"
You say that all that joyous noise is caused by diners yelling at each other, (and get over it.) I say it's caused by diners yelling, because otherwise they can't be heard by their companions due to all that noise.
I say enjoying a meal with quiet conversation is a right for adults. Noisemakers should try picnics.
8
I generally eat out to catch up with friends or for business. When the people next to you have to scream their orders, or when your own waitron can’t hear you, enough is enough. I don’t dine out to be drowned out by ambient noise or music. It’s the same as eating alone as people give up on trying to be heard.
5
This is inane. Loud restaurants are the product of bad design and loud sound systems. Period. People don't shout to be heard when there is no other noise to compete with.
8
Restaurants in the US are focused on turning tables so they can maximize profit. They don't want you sitting there drinking mineral water, conversing with your companion all night like you can in Europe. Hence the obnoxiously loud music and lack or sound proofing. Eat and get out. Take your conversations elsewhere. It's how capitalism dines out.
8
Pete Wells doesn’t pay for his meals. So the noise doesn’t bother him.
8
Women. Women young to middle age create the noise in restaurants by seeming to lose their ability to hear each other without shrieking as soon as they enter. If they wait at the bar before being seated, their decibel level rises as they relax and their their vocal cords loosen. A dining companion and I recently entered a small restaurant with trepidation when we saw a table set for a party of twenty. Seventeen men and three women arrived for their celebratory dinner and the entire restaurant enjoyed a quiet, relaxed evening out. No high frequency, high volume CONVERSATION. Ban women from tables larger than party of two.
9
@Jeromey "WELL!!!!"
@Jeromey
Oh, please. You've never heard the noise from a table of men? Especially if they are on the younger side. Or, heaven forbid, college age.
4
@Jeromey
No, loud men with their baritone and dominating voices, who talk at their dates at neighboring tables all through the meal without pausing, who pontificate and posture and fail to ask questions—*they* are responsible for much of the noise. Or, perhaps, rudeness isn’t limited by sex, and it’s just that your misogyny is showing.
6
I really like your reviews, Pete Wells, but I disagree about this. Yes, some noise is welcome - a completely quiet restaurant can sometimes be awkward (or sometimes not, but it's very situational). But the trend for interiors with hard surfaces and a minimal look means that sounds can often become overwhelming in a restaurant. I don't mind the noise if at my own table I am somewhat insulated from it - this happens at nice old places with big plushy booths for example. But when I'm sitting on a hard surface in a hard room and all I hear is music pounding a sort of roar of voices (the voices don't bother me, though, mostly the music) it makes me anxious and I don't enjoy the experience. I have abandoned some places for that reason, or taken to sitting at the bar where I'm close enough to my friend to be able to hear them. I agree that we want some noise, but it has gotten out of control. And the music is usually just some corporate playlist.
119
@reader
I find myself going to dinner earlier and earlier so I can eat before the place fills up with people and the noise gets too loud.
9
@reader Exactly that! With all the hard surfaces, sound just bounces around until it BECOMES noise. We noticed this at a rather nice new restaurant, with a happening new chef (open kitchen plan). Our guests and we could not follow our own conversations, and one guest said "I'm sorry, but even with my hearing aid, I can't follow what we're talking about, so if you don't mind, i'll just take my ears out and and eat." That was the 1st time, it was 1986, and it's only gotten worse since then.
5
@reader I'm not sure I even understand the point of the column. It's fine to indicate that different people are looking for different types of atmosphere (including noise levels) at different times. But doesn't that speak to the importance of including a note about this aspect of ambiance in restaurant reviews?
Right at the top WaPo's Tom S is mentioned, and why not take his approach (which I think is excellent)? Note the noise level and it's character (loud music making it necessary to shout, loud patron chatter due to insufficient noise muffling technologies, fairly quiet patron chatter with quiet background music) so that readers can take that factor into account depending on whether they're looking for a rousing good time or a conversation with dinner companions.
There seem to be a lot of words to no meaningful end here. Add the information and let patrons decide.
5
The noise issue seems simple (to me): restaurateurs or, (hopefully, more accurately) their publicists, mistakenly equate noise with "excitement". Noise is NOT "excitement", it's just noise. And it's unnecessary in a restaurant.
Dulling one of your senses does NOT amplify or enhance the others.
161
I carry with me ear “hi-fi” plugs to use in noisy places. Because, sensory overload. Not a perfect solution but still helpful. I could enjoy the company of friends and still nearly hear what they say most of the time.
11
@dchow the problem is that it feels strange and awkward to chew and swallow wearing such earplugs
Oh my god, he said the unthinkable. Good for him. This whole dispute is like the performative calls to boycott Facebook, or, in the past, turn off your television sets. If you like quiet dining, there are places to find it. If you enjoy hub-bub, as he says, it's part of the experience. Lighten up, folks - it's a complex, sometimes noisy world out there, an experience that can be as enjoyable as it is annoying.
4
Why are restaurants so much noisier these days? My observations:
(1) Restaurant design now favors sleek, hard surfaces and few if any textiles. Gone are the noise-absorbing carpets, upholstered chairs, tablecloths and wall decor of yore;
(2) Restaurants pack more people into every smaller spaces;
(3) A disproportionate percentage of restaurant-goers are older and their hearing has begin to suffer. Hearing impairment/loss often goes hand in hand with mounting intolerance to loud noises and increased difficulty separating conversation from background noise.
My rule of thumb: if I have to shout to be heard, or physically lean across my dinner plate to hear my companion, I'm not going back to that joint during prime time, no matter how excellent it may be.
5
I've worked in health and safety in industrial environments, and it seems to me that it's very likely that the noise levels in some restaurants exceed the OSHA limits for servers and other employees. Why aren't these being enforced?
7
If you want a quiet restaurant for dinner, go at 6:30.
About the (correctly noted) contrast with many European restaurants in many of these comments: Americans in general simply talk louder than Europeans. They/we (I am from Europe and live in the US) do it on the streets, in vehicles, in shops, and in restaurants. And when surrounded by loud talkers, they/we simply talk louder. I don't know where this trait comes from, but it's the biggest difference my European friends notice about Americans, and I think it's at the root of the issue discussed here. I like a pleasant buzz in a restaurant, but if I can't hear myself think, or hear what my companions are saying, I don't go back.
2
If one of the primary reasons you eat out is to talk to your dining companions, that goal is simply unattainable in a noisy restaurant. For those who like the roar of music, shouting and uproarious laughter with their food and drink, that's fine. When I'm in that kind of soundscape, I shut down, stop talking and stare at my food and wine. The food critic at the Washington Post has exactly the right idea and Mr. Wells should adopt his sound measuring techniques.
5
Sometimes we choose intimate, relatively quiet restaurants and sometimes we want more active and lively ones which naturally will be louder -- that's fine. But there's good noise and bad noise.
I take issue with active, loud restaurants that do nothing to soften the noise level so that they become a positive contribution to the vibe rather than simply annoying. Installation of sound baffling mechanisms on the ceilings and/or walls makes a world of difference. Unfortunately many restaurants don't bother.
A properly softened room can be loud and have energy while still allowing diners to have a reasonable conversation at their table. I wish more restaurants would make this investment.
3
Basically you are saying it is a matter of taste. I am fine with that, but I am waiting to see you getting excoriated by commenters who want to say that this is manifesting insensitivity to some disadvantaged group who, for cultural, physical, or other reasons, have difficulty tolerating the noise.
"Restaurants are loud because we’re loud. With a few exceptions, when we complain about the noise, we’re complaining about ourselves."
No, I think that we're complaining about poor design, or, even worse, an intentionally loud environment.
Pete (can I call you Pete?) likes this part of the restaurant experience. But just like some of us can find the food too salty or too bland when others don't, tastes vary. I think Pete likes a level of noise which is louder than the average diner enjoys.
4
I think the impulse to fill a restaurant with noise comes from the same place that makes shops air-condition their spaces to ankle-numbing, single-digit temperatures. It’s aimed at that tiny fraction of their customers who would be upset if it were otherwise.
1
This isn't a "ringing defense"; it's nonsense. Restaurants these days are carefully designed to be loud. Hard floors, hard walls, hard ceilings - glass, concrete, and steel. Owners think it makes the place sound "festive". Then they cram in as many tables as possible, so you're sitting three feet or less from your next-table neighbor. I don't want to hear my neighboring table's conversation. I want to hear MY table's conversation. Without having to shout. If I can't do that, I won't return. If I'm waiting for a table and the noise is earsplitting, I leave.
12
Restaurants are frequently designed to be noisy, with hard walls and ceilings that reflect sounds rather than absorb them. If I can tell as I enter that it'll be too loud, I refuse any reservation previously made and leave. If it turns out to be too noisy after sitting down, I try to get the staff to move me to a different table or ask them to turn down any music that's playing. If nothing works, I'll skip coffee and dessert and never go back.
The only noise I ever enjoyed at a restaurant was in one, in San Francisco, with a tall glass ceiling, curved at the corners. The dominant sound seemed to come from silverware on plates, and was very pleasant. If it can't be that, keep it quiet, please.
7
Completely agree with most of the comments here...
"Restaurants please! Turn off the music!"
So annoying and exhausting to try to talk over loud music, but even dinning alone is problematic.
Especially if the music is something I'd never voluntarily listen to on my own. Time after time, the experience of trying to tune out screeching vocals or repetitive lyrics result in increasing tension and stress to the point I can actually feel my cortisol levels rising.
Some places even have speakers outside, so escaping outdoors isn't even an option.
10
No only are restaurants entirely too loud (and I assume this is by design), but the louder the decibel level, the louder everyone is forced to talk. People are YELLING over each other and whatever music is playing and the noise is amplified by concrete floors and hard surfaces everywhere. It’s awful.
13
Boisterous folk and hard surfaces dont help but we all know the real problem is pounding recorded music meant to emulate a nightclub or "lounge" atmosphere, and yes, its often purposefully employed to turn tables and sell more booze.
The readers have spoken and (for once) are pretty much are in agreement. Lets all just BOYCOTT loud NYC restaurants. If its your first time at the joint and cant hear your server or companion, ask if recorded music can be lowered. If its still too loud by the time food arrives - leave, with NO payment.
13
A coffee shop in my town just relocated to a newly constructed building. They had every opportunity to design the space to be comfortable and calm, but what they came up with was cement floors, metal furnishings, exposed metal duct-work, and nothing at all to absorb the din created by steaming milk for lattes. It's the perfect design to get people out quickly--except those who are sitting alone with noise-canceling headphones, or with their ear canals plugged up by earbuds. I went there to catch up with an old friend, and won't be going back.
12
While obviously pitched to adults, one advantage of loud restaurants comes up when dining with young children. Toddlers and babies tend not to remain quiet for very long.
In a room full of people talking at top volume and poor acoustics, the cries and yelps of your babies can go unnoticed.
Much more enjoyable than being stared at by everyone in a quiet place!
1
Ever since I was old enough to go out on my own with friends as a teenager I've disliked having to shout and struggling to hear. I enjoy conversations, it's why I get together with other people. I reluctantly decided that, as much as I love to dance, I was better suited to pubs than clubs. But then pubs, bars and even restaurants started adding loud music. And TV screens. And sometimes an extra-extra large screen hanging somewhere as well.
I don't begrudge a club having music to dance to but I mightily begrudge a restaurant making it impossible to hear my dinner companions. It removes one of the very reasons I'm at a restaurant- to socialize.
15
What makes a pleasant environment for dining is obviously a totally personal decision. But, the number of folks who complain about the noise level in most current restaurants has to be a pretty robust indicator that Wells is flat wrong.
If we like a restaurant's offerings, we try to find times when noise levels are more comfortable. If we can't, we cross the place off our list, no matter how good the food. It's simple: tell the restaurant how you feel about their environment directly or by ratings, and vote with your feet. Bon appetit et bonne conversation!
14
This is really a fat-free column, and by Fat, I do mean thought. I am 85, my hearing is so acute that I am the envy of middle aged audiologists, and there is only a handful of restaurants in NYC where I can enjoy a leisurely meal with good conversation with friends, who mostly need hearing aids, or with adult grandchildren, who do not. Most of these eateries are très cher. Therefore, my hefty expenditures are being withheld from the market. Who benefits?
18
“Restaurants are loud because we’re loud.“
The noise that a roomful of diners make—as they talk and laugh—is entirely different from music that is played at a volume that inhibits conversation among the diners themselves. If restaurants are loud because of the sounds people make when they’re enjoying themselves, there's something comforting in that noise. Adding to that noise by blasting music does not connote “fun.” It says to me that the restaurant’s owner isn’t confident enough in the food and natural atmosphere to let those things stand on their own.
15
As someone who, despite a hearing disability (I currently wear one hearing aid and one Cochlear Implant), has been able to graduate from a university with high honors and achieve a Master’s Degree 36 additional credits I disagree with your opinion that restaurants are not too loud. For me the ear pain from loud restaurants can be excruciating. And yes I use the latest technology to try to achieve better listening situations.
You see those of us with hearing loss actually have a LOWER threshold of pain for loud noise. I guess it is one of God’s crueler jokes. If we want to be social we have to endure pain and exhaustion (from intense listening) in noisy situations.
Sincerely
13
Pete, in my humble opinion you nailed it - Which means I heard every word. I am in my 50th year in food service. I am currently watching my employers spend tens of thousands in post construction dollars to tackle the reverberations of sounds in their beautiful restaurant. Once all of the cork is installed on the gorgeous wood paneling and the exposed brick is camouflaged by the plant life of a 'living wall' -we will still be embraced by the sounds of customers - who choose to dine in a public space with each other. The energy generated by people engaging with one another over food and drink is for the most part the end product of a successful restaurant. Thank you Pete for addressing this topic.
2
The author completely ignores the most important contributor to excessive, unwelcome noise in restaurants: music played at deliberately loud levels. Why bother to go when I can't make myself heard or hear others? Managers get grumpy when you ask them to please turn it down, but it is what keeps me away.
26
In bars, the music sound level is kept sufficiently high to discourge conversation. When you are involved in conversation, you don't drink as much.
My group regularly walks out of noisy establishments even after placing our orders. A "thank you, but it's too noisy" is sufficient.
Don't bother complaining just vote with your feet. They will ultimately get the message.
17
Nice try, but the author misses several points.
-He could have started with "why music at all?" What is it that makes people think that if there is no music, then the restaurant is not a good place? I don't have an answer, but I do know that I prefer to eat with no music or high quality acoustic music.
-My observation is that very few people actually listen to the music. It is immaterial to the enjoyment of the food, but
-The author has not considered that in many restaurants, there is a noise cycle that is enhanced by the staff: As the restaurant fills up, patron sound levels (as in decibels) increases. Then the staff turns up the the volume which in turn makes the patrons talk louder.
-Being a music critic, I am very particular about the music I listen to. Music and food are related to social atmosphere.
I was recently in a restaurant in Trinidad, Cuba. An excellent quitar-percussion-voice quintet plays there, acoustically. The local Cubans and the Latin American tourists listened respectfully. Only the boisterous American tourists, who conspicuously placed themselves right next to the band, ruined the atmosphere for everyone else. The band just shrugged their shoulders, stopped playing, and waited for the Americans to finish their party and leave.
23
I used to travel to Europe with a travel group. Invariably the manager of a cafe, hotel, or pub would ask our group to quiet down, other patrons were complaining. Our group’s response was along the lines of why? are we in church? And then continued with their loud conversation.
1
We find that the music in eating places usually is too loud and customers have to talk louder to hear each other. Usually we ask the wait person to please lower the volume of the music in at least half of the places we eat.
20
I might be the exception, but I like to talk to my wife when we're out dining. We shout at each other enough at home.
27
I once went down the Grand Canyon with the owner of several successful high end NYC restaurants. After a day or two I felt that I knew him well enough to give him precious advice. I confided to him that he could make much more money if he made his restaurants quieter. He smiled slyly and said, "Turn and burn. We make our money in a very few short period of time and we make much of it from alcohol. High levels of noise creates stress; stress makes people drink; and it gets them to leave more quickly."
14
@Shirokanedai This is so sick. But I don't doubt it works. Maybe those of us who want to dine in peace should create a rating system for noise levels in restaurants and refuse to patronize restaurants that are too noisy, and reward ones that are not so unbearable. Then we can create a market for restaurants that don't add to our stress intentionally when we're off the clock and trying to relax.
4
As a European having lived in the US for almost 3 decades, I still cannot fathom the ubiquitous TVs in US restaurants. If I see one, I get out.
22
I'm in Dallas where dining out is the norm. I know acoustics, having designed radio and recording studios to disrupt echo and a hollow effect. ALL the new, chic restaurants do EVERYTHING TO AMPLIFY the noise: 90-degree wall angles, glass walls, no curtains, packing in tables like sardines. It's supposed to make the place feel "alive," one restaurant manager told me. I won't go to these cruddy, screeching places.
22
I go out to eat with friends at least once a week. I just don’t go to restaurants that are too loud, even if I like their food. I’ve simply crossed them off my list. Since I live in SoCal, I’ve found that one can often avoid the problem by eating on a patio, often with space heaters if necessary.
9
One of the reasons I enjoy traveling is the joy of dining out with others and having a leisurely meal and good conversation about the food or some other topic.
It is remarkable how loud Americans are in general when abroad and how unaware they are of the effect they have on others. Or perhaps they don't care. Here in the states, it is very rare to find a quiet restaurant especially if it is a new one and popular since they seem to be intended to be noisy with lots of hard surfaces, etc.
17
I believe you are correct: European vs American diners.
1
You are entirely missing the point, sir. The noise level of restaurants is a conscious decision made by restauranteurs and carried out by acoustic companies. If you want a quieter restaurant you use absorbent materials. For a louder space, hard surfaces.
Restaurants have chosen to acoustically amplify noise because some primal part of us, their customers, responds to the noise. There is nothing natural about it.
14
I have, and continue to eat in restaurants around the world, now mostly in Italy and Spain. Only on the occasional visit to the USA I might eat in restaurants.
Overall, my impression is that U.S. restaurants are too noisy and too dark.
I prefer to eat at the homes of my hosts and am willing to do the cooking if I am allowed.
10
Such an interesting topic. Made me realize that what we want is a particular mix of noise: warm conversation, low volume music (tables not too close). An empty restaurant with neither of these is something we instinctively avoid, and one with booming conversations, or just music, also inhospitable. It's almost as if the room needs to be "tuned." Restaurants who get that combination right, know the importance of it is almost equal to the balance of salt or spice in their cuisine.
9
Several decades ago, when my father and I both happened to be in London, he invited me to dinner. I was hoping for one of the trendy (and no doubt noisy) restaurants I 'd read about. But he wanted to eat his Dover sole at an elegant, very quiet restaurant with tables spaced far apart and a decorous gray-haired clientele. My point is that the noise we happily put up with and even enjoy when we're young becomes an intense annoyance when we're old. Now that I'm nearly the same age my father was a quarter century ago, I fully sympathize with his wish to eat in quiet surroundings, so that he could enjoy his food in peace and have a quiet tete-a-tete with his daughter.
17
Not mentioned but is loud music used by certain restaurants to turn tables faster? Or does loud music attract patrons that consume more alcohol?
13
Admitting that noise can be mitigated by architectural details gives the game away - why don't more restaurants do this? Tiled floors, wood walls, and hard ceilings bounce the sounds back and forth, and any decent restaurateur should know this.
Loud music may be profitable, but it is intolerable. I have had a sore throat from yelling at my companions across the table far too many times. At least add a decibel reading to your reviews - the reviews are for us, not for yourself.
20
The extremely loud noise is due to wind blasted with music so loud it probably causes damage or terrible stress to the restaurant workers. I for one, refuse to shout just to be heard by the person sitting next to me. Let’s start a movement. Hear loss is real!
13
Eating out is one of the biggest wastes of time and money. It is very rare to find a comfortable restaurant, and the food is always underwhelming. I was in Japan last year for the first time and had quite a few enjoyable, comfortable, and relaxing dining experiences.
8
If patrons don't complain at the loud premises, the managers and developers will continue to think that what they are doing is OK. Noisy restaurants are made that way, on purpose, by developers who insist that noisy places are better for their bottom lines. They don't care that hearing damage begins at 85dB (per OSHA and NIOSH). Patrons and workers should. Restaurants should not be tolerated as noise pits by people going for a pleasant meal. If you haven't already loaded a decibel meter app onto your cellphone, please do it now, then use it at the restaurants you go to. Too loud? Walk out, but first tell the manager why.
18
There’s a lot of great things that can be said about José Andres’ restaurants but one feature that rarely gets noticed is the noise. Every one I’ve been to takes great effort to makes efforts to acoustically treat the space so that, even when it’s hopping, it still feels intimate and quiet. I’d rather more reviews highlight the restaurants that are doing it right than complaining about the ones that aren’t.
12
@Evan Jaloe in Las Vegas was noisy as heck the last time we dined there. (Bazaar Meat wasn't too noisy) Would like to return to Jaloe and we will continue to support Jose Andres' restaurants that aren't too darn loud.
1
There's a difference between the buzz that makes a restaurant interesting and the din that makes it impossible to carry on a conversation with dinner companions. In Washington, there are too many restaurants where patrons are shouting at one another just be heard and at the wait staff just to place an order. When the decibel level is the same as the runway at Washington National Airport it's time to call the police or the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). I go to restaurants as much for the conversation with friends as for the food, perhaps even more for the former. Mr. Wells is confusing "din" with "dinner." They're mutually exclusive. I'll have to remember to eat somewhere other than where Mr. Wells recommends.
18
American restaurant noise makes eating out almost intolerable. We used to eat out three or four times a week when living in San Francisco and Chicago, where we could always find excellent restaurants that focused on food and not on the artificial "fun" of loud music, which forces excessively loud conversation. Perhaps that has changed, though not in my favorite places in the Bay Area, Chez Panisse Cafe in Berkeley and Zuni in SF, where there is no background music to amp up the conversational level.
But now, living in New York, we find many restaurants with good food that we avoid simply because of the necessity to scream your conversation. It is true that a few very high end restaurants are relatively quiet, but it should be that moderately priced places are also hospitable toward relaxed talking.
We also spend a a lot of time in Europe, mainly Italy and France. There we find that restaurants do not seem to feel it necessary to create an atmosphere of excitement but prefer to offer good food and the conditions in which to enjoy it. Are there many better human experiences that great conversation over great food? In general, Europeans seem to exercise a customary civility when they are eating, even in German beer halls, and keep their conversations close and personal.
We are simply exhausted by the effort required to speak and hear in the majority of American restaurants and wish that restauranteurs would move toward European norms. No music would be a good start.
20
American restaurant noise makes eating out almost intolerable. We used to eat out three or four times a week when living in San Francisco and Chicago, where we could always find excellent restaurants that focused on food and not on the artificial "fun" of loud music, which forces excessively loud conversation. Perhaps that has changed, though not in my favorite places in the Bay Area, Chez Panisse Cafe in Berkeley and Zuni in SF, where there is no background music to amp up the conversational level.
But now, living in New York, we find many restaurants with good food that we avoid simply because of the necessity to scream your conversation. It is true that a few very high end restaurants are relatively quiet, but it should be that moderately priced places are also hospitable toward relaxed talking.
We also spend a a lot of time in Europe, mainly Italy and France. There we find that restaurants do not seem to feel it necessary to create an atmosphere of excitement but prefer to offer good food and the conditions in which to enjoy it. Are there many better human experiences that great conversation over great food? In general, Europeans seem to exercise a customary civility when they are eating, even in German beer halls, and keep their conversations close and personal.
We are simply exhausted by the effort required to speak and hear in the majority of American restaurants and wish that restauranteurs would move toward European norms. No music would be a good start.
5
If Pete Wells doesn't want to report on the occupied noise level, then he should report on seating density, music type and volume, and architectural finishes, since all have bearing on the overall sonic experience. For instance, lower-priced restaurants in high-rent areas pack patrons together with the resulting insufferable noise buildup. You do not find this level of density in restaurants that cater to the 1%, hence crowd sound in expensive restaurants tends to be quieter. Furthermore, expensive restaurants often have specialty acoustical finishes that further reduce noise buildup. Also, I doubt chefs in expensive restaurants are allowed to crank background music to levels that they can hear above the kitchen area din.
12
I also go out to restaurants to talk to friends. I don't go out to restaurants to yell at friends, or to be unable to hear what they're saying over the background noise. The acoustics of most restaurants today are atrocious, full of high ceilings, hard surfaces, and ceilings and walls angled to reflect sound throughout the room.
Glad you like the noise, Pete. Many of us don't, and our opinion of it is just as valid as yours (and vice versa).
19
This is where the writer gets it wrong:
"A few chefs and owners love to play their favorite music at teenage-Metallica-fan volumes but in most restaurants, the music is mere accompaniment to the crowd. Restaurants are loud because we’re loud. With a few exceptions, when we complain about the noise, we’re complaining about ourselves."
At the vast majority of restaurants I despise because of the noise, loud music is the number one culprit.
Number two is awful acoustics that seem deliberately designed to amplify the noise of the diners rather than mute them.
People talking, servers walking, pots clanking in the kitchen -- few of us have problems with that. And those that do really are better off staying home.
The fact that this didn't used to be so much of a problem suggests that something in the restaurant environment is changing -- and changing for the worse.
19
I disagree with Mr. Wells when he writes - "To those who ask about decibel readings, I say they strike me as false precision, because variables like the night of the week or the number of tables for six or more can have a major effect on the volume." On the contrary - they help to inform the reader/diner of precise data regarding such variables as the particular night of the week and or the number of large group tables which, indeed, do play a role in the decibel factor. Thank you for listening, Mr. Wells!
6
What an absolutely marvelous tongue in cheek rejoinder to people who expect their complaints to be taken seriously and fixed pronto.
I must confess that I too do not like noisy restaurants as I have grown older. I am putting off getting hearing aids I guess.
However, I do love going to a Greek restaurant. It is a pleasure to see the several generations of a family at the next table, laughing, arguing, while the baby is being fed and the toddlers are allowed to run around. Yes, they are noisy, but so what! Life is unscripted and noisy!!
Perhaps when the amount being shelled out for a haute cuisine dinner is in the stratosphere, then one expects and gets serious attention to one's comforts including the sound level. Hey, multi-million dollar deals are being contemplated and negotiated. There is no interest in listening to grandparents and grandchildren at the next table.
Perhaps restaurants should advertise if they are for people who are out to enjoy life with their fellow human beings and don't mind a little annoying fracas at the next table or if they are for people who are out to be seen and to see and flaunt their wealth.
Thank you Pete Wells for pointing out some home truths.
I’m glad for Pete Wells that he had great hearing and can converse easily in noisy restaurants.
So he can see what many of us are complaining about, I’d like him to wear ear plugs when he goes out for meals. I expect he will struggle to understand his companions. Well, that is what I have to deal with on a daily basis.
12
I’ve walked out of more than one restaurant because it was just too loud. Believe it or not, some of us actually want to enjoy conversation at dinner.
17
I disagree with the author. Obviously his readers are asking for information on restaurants so that they can try them or avoid them.
Presumably when he reviews a restaurant he goes to the restaurant. If he were a Restaurant Food Critic he could sit at home and eat take-out.
In his reviews he tells us about his experience of the restaurant. The readers, decide if they want to go or not based on what, in the author's experience is important to them. The volume of the restaurant is critical information for many readers and should be required information.
16
There seems to be a cultural change regarding live music. Decades ago, if live musicians were not there to do a formal show or provide dance music, they were background music and expected to be just that: background. Now it seems that *every* band has to crank up the volume to stadium level regardless of how small the venue. I dealt with this just last night. Small bar, no dancing, close atmosphere and the singer felt the need to bellow her way through her songs like Adele at Wembley Stadium. Music amplification *is* too loud.
8
When I was a young man in my early 20s I worked for a few months in a mine in the Northern Territory of Australia. I worked in the mill, where the ore was crushed in large machines. The noise was tremendous, but not much greater than in some restaurants I have been in.
When I was in my late 40s I developed high-frequency hearing loss accompanied by tinnitus. Every doctor and specialist I consulted attributed it to those few months I spent working in the mill at the Peko Mine — and told me nothing could be done.
Today, at 67, I have been living with tinnitus for 20 years. My ears are ringing even as I write this. Exposure to noise is a serious and under-appreciated public-health issue with consequences that, unfortunately, show up only decades later. The people who work in the restaurants that Mr. Wells feels so comfortable in should be wearing hearing protection — and perhaps the patrons, too.
16
Restaurant noise may not be a crime, but I choose not to spend my money in a place where I cant comfortably have a discussion with the people I'm dining with. The problem, IMHO, stems from the modern decor - hard edges and walls and industrial ceilings; Combined with too many tables/people per square foot.
A few months back I ate in a fashionable "classic" Steak House in Chicago, very high ceilings, drapery scattered throughout (next to but not closing off windows, it was well lit,) and leather backed booths along two walls. Crowded, but surprisingly quiet.
8
Restaurants are way too loud. Brunch at 9 am with techno music blaring is not welcome. And, it's not just restaurants. Hotels are just as bad. Music outside, in the lobby, in the elevator. Enough is enough.
15
It’s not just restaurants in NYC with a noise problem. The same problem exists here in the staid town of Williamsburg, VA. I and many of my friends have come to almost dread dining out because it’s very difficult to choose a place that doesn’t almost make one’s ears bleed. There are a couple of upscale restaurants in town that are more peaceful and conducive to conversation but we tire of going to the same two places all the time and we’re not always ready to pay an expensive dinner tab. I attribute the noise problem to the fad of non-insulated ceilings where the metal ducts are exposed and too loud music. Some places seem to think that customers have come to listen to the music rather than to eat and converse. Dining out is not, or shouldn’t be seen as a concert folks. One of my friends believes that loud, upbeat music is designed to keep the mostly young servers hyped. Another, more insightful friend, puts the onus the clientele itself. She believes that the cacophony that some few of us find so irksome is actually enjoyed or, at least, goes unnoticed by those whose daily lives take place within a jumble of incessant phone use, music, disjointed utterances that pass as actual conversation and an essential addiction to living a kaleidoscopic life. I think she may be on to something.
4
I am the partner of a person with a language-processing disability. Restaurant noise is the ONLY reason why, that in New York, a city with thousands of restaurant delights to sample, we’ve eaten out for dinner perhaps twice in the last year. Noise completely isolates my partner and prevents him from participating in conversation. I like well-prepared and interesting food, but not enough to forgo the sharing of the experience. Why dine out with friends when the experience is like dining alone? I’ll continue entertain at home. NYC restaurants will continue to lose our dollars.
8
I too hate noisy restaurants. My wife and I eat the majority of our restaurant meals in Italy, typically in osterie with hard surfaces and tables very close, frequently with children. Meals are pleasantly bubbly with conversation and never loud. Why? Never ever any music, tables are rarely turned, and Italians don't go to restaurants to "have a good time". (ie. feel energized, get a buzz on, etc.). They go to eat and talk. I agree with readers who put the onus for noise on economics. When selling alcohol and turning over tables are the keys to success, noise is good for business. I wish we had more choices, however, and that reviewers would rate restaurants on noise as well as food and service.
14
I recently returned from an extended stay in Italy and found that restaurants there are substantially quieter than in a Seattle, as this commenter notes. A lot of it is because they keep the music low and use architectural elements that absorb sound. Even so Mr. Wells has a point. In the US, people are loud. They let loose with uproarious laughter and yell over one another to grab attention and generally behave like they were the only ones in the room. In Italy, not so. Italians in a restaurant understand they are in a shared space and respect for others means not intruding on them, sonically or otherwise. You rarely hear anyone raise their voice or hoot or holler or bellow loud guffaws. They (and their children) are aware of the art of etiquette, which Americans have lost.
11
The noise is awful but what’s most surprising is the durability of the whole tattoo/Urban Pirate/19th century-barkeep look the employees at all of these places espouse. I feel like I’ve been being served by an extra from Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York” for the last ten plus years...
10
background music should be just that, background. As far as TV's? Yes, that is not a restaurant, that is a bar where lonely people can sit with others alone, watch TV and drink in a public place. It is not a restaurant.
6
Right on.
Those French people, with their quiet outdoor cafes and bistros where you can have an intelligent conversation about books and film, are total losers.
Why can't they pump in loud music to really enhance the experience?
12
The most IMPORTANT noise that wasn`t even mentioned in the article is the noise generated by the little DEMONS running around yelling , screaming, and squealing while driving the diners CRAZY !! The parents of these little monsters think it`s "cute" , but don`t realize that THEY are the only ones that think so !!
In these cases, I suggest diners get up .... go to the cash register ....... and REFUSE to pay for their unfinished meal ...... then WALK OUT !!!
7
If I can't hear my tablemates talk, why am I there?
22
Pete,
What did you write? I sat down in a local restaurant to read your column but it was so dark I couldn’t see to read the menu or your column. And that incessant tv noise and music caused me to leave the restaurant and go home where I can hear my thoughts and see your column. Shame, I was willing to drop some gelt for a fine meal.
10
As many on this thread have noticed, people speak louder during dinner because restaurant owners/managers think they run a club not a restaurant! I love heavy metal, go to many rock concerts but restaurants are not clubs and should not be! It is just not enjoyable for me to have dinner while a DJ spins the latest music while I'm eating. Nothing to do with age or my hearing...
9
I assume you only wrote this as clickbait.
The noise level in some - many - restaurants is simply intolerable. And having to shout is not appealing.
I have walked out when it was clear that there would be no possibility of enjoying a conversation, or the food.
And I'll do it again.
15
Many words to say absolutely nothing: a complete avoidance of the subject.
11
Does Mr. Wells go to restaurants by himself and thus has no need for conversation?
15
That was an unfair jab at Tom Sietsema.
The modus operandus of Pete Wells seems to be: get lots of clicks
by shooting fish in a barrel.
5
@Essodame Absolutely. Tom Sietsema has done a world of good by highlighting restaurants where "one must speak with raised voice." I shouldn't have to speak with raised voice in a restaurant. It's crude and impolite to do so. It's also exhausting. I avoid such restaurants.
12
The major fail in Pete's column shows the frequency with which Times' stories and columns are never read by an editor. The subhead of his piece says "Complaints about sound are complaints about ourselves." Uh, no, clearly not, Pete. Complaints about sound are complaints about others.
11
@Bruce Complaints about sound are not complaints about ourselves. Their complaints about excessive noise. Wells' comment is a snobby reflection of a restaurant critic who disrespects his readers and, clearly from the responses to his article, his readers (or former readers). He owes an apology.
3
I think it is unbelievably sad that I have to bring ear plugs to restaurants the same way I do to music venues. A recent trip to a delicious place in Manhattan- where I forgot my ear plugs - left me with my ears ringing well until the next day.... just like I'd been at some punk revival concert or similar. I couldn't hear my dining companions, I couldn't hear the server, I couldn't hear the bartender. I couldn't hear squat. And that was all before they brought the band in!!!
It's too loud. I've honestly decided this is a choice so that patrons don't linger: so that we eat and get the heck out of there so they can flip the table for the next guest.
9
Peter
Mr. Wells: Please reread Frank Bruni's column of March 20, 2019. Then read it again.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/30/opinion/sunday/best-restaurant-over-50.html.
It nicely explains what an enjoyable restaurant experience should consist of.
9
Pete Wells, you are totally wrong. Restauranteurs: DONT LISTEN TO HIM. if someone is smart they'll open "sandwiches in silence" restaurant and it will be a huge hit. If you open anything with decent food AND NO MUSIC, we will come. the sound of VOICES is joyous and pleasurable. the sound of plastic music is just as trashy and upsetting and deleterious to pleasure as eating plastic food and looking at plastic trash in the ocean.
11
Restaurants that are extremely noisy are hazardous for the employees, who often have to work long shifts. It's not just about the patrons.
10
The penchant for high ceilings fashion the last ~8 yrs.is the main cause for intolerable unintelligible loudness.
4
Just you wait until you get tinnitus, Mr. Wells. Then we can talk.
8
Lousy acoustics plus needless background music can wreck a really good meal and a good night out.
Where is the pleasure in yelling across the table (for four) to make yourself heard. There are many times where we skipped coffee and conversation because it was the noise level was intolerable.
7
From these responses, it’s obvious that the generations who like noisy restaurants are not NY Times readers.
4
This whole piece is ridiculous. Sorry. But it is.
If I go to a restaurant alone, I want to read and enjoy my food.
If I go with others, I want to talk to them and enjoy my food.
I don't want to have to shout. I do want to be able to hear.
10
Pete--
you spent a LOT of ink making that case, and it looks like you're listening, but it sure doesn't sound like it...
6
This is a very short-sighted column. Wait until you get a little older. I can still hear a pin drop...literally. But I HATE noisy restaurants. I don't want to be a lip reader to hear the people I'm with. Years ago, a Times critic deleted one star because of too much noise. That was a voice worth listening to.
7
it amazes me how much the writer had to write in support of restaurant noise. Methinks thou protests too much. Noise is noise is noise and if it's too loud, it's too loud.
7
Including a dB level is a great idea. (it comes with your Apple Watch). Then customers can pick the din they want with their dinner.
5
I love the anonymity of a loud enough restaurant such that you and your friend/date can have a full volume conversation literally a foot away from another couple and it's totally private.
I agree that there do exist some restaurants where the acoustics can make the sounds of dining harsh and tiring. And here are places where the music volume is truly too loud.
But who in the heck wants to go out to a library on a Saturday night?
Wells, this article is longer than most of your reviews, and similarly annoying.
Why not avoid writing such an article, and report in your reviews whether or not the place is noisy, regardless whether you personally view it as an enhancement to your eating experience or not, as others invariably do not want to pay the exorbitant NYC restaurant prices, only to be engulfed in noise as well.
Restaurateurs, add carpet!
4
We have stopped eating out for that same reason. I agree it is time we started Noise Shaming these places.
A decibel meter is really easy to use once you set it up correctly. Set the "weighting" scale to A and the "speed" to Slow.
Anything above 80db in A weight (ignoring bass) in Slow is actually loud. I would love resturants to be "70dB Slow A weighting".
You can get such a meter for free and easily in the Apple App Store or Google Play Store. Keep the settings constant and you will see just how good some place are and others terrible.
Good luck!
4
Pete when it comes to reviewing food you are the best. But when it comes to evaluating the impact of noisy restaurants you are totally out of touch with the needs of so many of your mature readers.However great the food the oppressive noise ruins the experience for most of us. The fifty plus crowd wants to be able to talk to their dinner partner without using an IPhone. Pete can you here me?
6
Maybe Mr.Wells eats alone so the noise and loud music are his companions. For me dinning with my wife and friends is a time for conversation.
5
The article is demeaning and wrong. It implies that people who do not like noisy restaurants are not attuned to the joy of communal buzz. I have been to many wonderful, packed, buzzing restaurants with music and people of all ages where the sound levels were perfectly acceptable.
The problem is many restaurants appear to pay no attention to acoustics and the result is noise. It is a shame that the author did not reference the trove of research about noise levels in restaurants, including from the NYT such as this article from Jul 19, 2012:
“DANGEROUS DECIBELS In New York City, Indoor Noise
The New York Times measured noise levels at 37 restaurants, bars, stores and gyms across the city and found levels that experts said bordered on dangerous at one-third of them. At the Brooklyn Star in Williamsburg, the volume averaged 94 decibels over an hour and a half — as loud as an electric drill....”
We like the buzz of community, not an electric drill.
8
When you're looking for a place to eat in a strange city, do you choose a crowded restaurant or an empty one? If you care about the noise, an empty one. More room for the rest of us who go where people like to eat.
1
More people doesn’t mean it has to be too noisy to have a conversation
Oh, so now that we don't work in city rooms (like author and myself) with clacking typewriters or printing presses rumbling below, we find comfort in a noisy restaurant. And, you say it's more tolerable noise than "the brontosaurus stomping of garbage trucks" (whatever this phrase means) and sort of like "the purring of a cat" whose chin was stroked, (utterly insane!). Yes, people want to eat in noisy restaurants because they are starved of noise--even with jackhammers at work on every other city street. Aural assaults in restaurants, to my hearing, are as irritating as being subjected to "Jingle Bell Rock" in delis and nail salons during the Christmas season which makes me want to put a gun (which I don't own...but metaphorically speaking) to my head. Your article is just more feckless talk.
5
Pete Wells response is a cop out to the severe increase in restaurant noise. Guess if lived in a bubble where I get paid to eat for free at restaurants then it’s all just great!!!
I remember when dining out specifically in the 80s and 90s...if a table was being too loud the management/owner would politely ask the loud (no inside voices) diners to please keep it down and this worked. I also remember the restaurants that would kick out the loud yuppies. So are the oblivious loud millennials the children of the yuppies?
5
Uh-oh... "It’s mainly the unamplified voices of customers fleshed out with amplified, typically recorded music." Those voices ARE amplified - yelling to talk over the "music," the clatter of a place, and, others doing the same amount of yelling - for the same reasons.. Forget it. (???) (???) I SAID, "Forget it!"
3
I have resisted the urge to comment but have finally succumbed.
Pete Wells appears to dine alone. At least I can’t find anything in this article that contradicts this assumption.
Eating alone is not particularly pleasant, and being surrounded by loud people and loud music gives the lonely diner something to be absorbed in and so feel less alone. Never mind that the others are most likely total strangers and the music enough to make the lonely diner feel like a Palovian dog.
Pete Wells should only review a restaurant when he goes with someone else and they have a conversation, or at least try to. He will probably get bored with having dinner with the same person every night, so he should invite different people with different areas of knowledge and expertise. They will learn from him, he will learn from them. When they have to scream at each other to have a conversation, he should report this in his review.
I am available to talk about contemporary art. I look to the Times to pay for a round trip ticket (first class, natch) from Los Angeles. And a decent hotel for two nights.
4
Pete Wells may not be hearing impaired but on this subject he is tone deaf.
10
Restaurateurs, are you listening?
3
So I don’t get this article at all other than learning that the reviewer doesn’t mind noise - how nice for him. Doesn’t he believe scientific studies that constant loud noise can affect long term hearing ability? He doesn’t seem to get that for some of us too much noise and we literally can’t taste anything. If eating is a communal pleasure and the noise is so loud you can’t “commune” with your date or spouse or friends or family then what’s the point of the experience.
5
You didn’t address the most annoying cause of restaurant noise: that person at the bar or the table next to you that just has to watch that YouTube clip at full volume in public. Or the person who deals with dining out with their child by putting an iPad or handheld video game in their hands without headphones. That person should stay home, cook their own food or pour their own drink and watch their own TV. There is truly nothing worse as far as restaurant noise goes. People conversing is fine, the buzz of a busy waitstaff is a joy. The lo-fi squawking of a room full of devices and people who can’t be bothered to slap in their earbuds is awful. It’s discourteous and selfish. And it’s getting worse.
3
Why do they have to play loud music? i walk right out of such joints after telling them in a LOUD voice why I won't eat there.
4
Oh, please. Is it too much to ask that I be able to hear the voice of the person across from me at the table? Am I being unreasonable in the world Mr. Wells lives in?
8
No, no, no, Mr. Wells. All this romanticizing about how convivial a noisy restaurant is. PUHLEEZE!
You were far better when critiquing Nishi in 2016, for example, where the noise level was listed as “abusive.” For heaven’s sake bring back your common sense. Above a certain decibel, noisy restaurants are nothing but a tortured and painful experience.
At Nishi, highly sensitive microphones seem to be placed directly above all the loudest people, picking up and amplifying their every screech.
… When I returned, the only obvious change was that more sound-dampening tiles had been affixed to the ceiling. In a phone interview, Mr. Chang told me he is “going crazy about the sound, but we are working actively to do the best we can.” If they helped, I couldn’t tell. Nishi is still as loud as the opening face-off of Game 1 of the Stanley Cup finals.
Pete Wells, NY Times, May 17, 2016
3
Yikes, Pete! Sorry, but nobody should have to go home from dinner with a headache because they had to yell the entire time to be heard by people across the table.
It's ridiculous, and not only is it unpleasant for diners, but it's also a very real health threat to the employees. Turn the music down a little and put some acoustic tiles up. There are plenty of inexpensive ways to dampen sound in a room.
4
We could eat à la français and talk more quietly! Of course we would have to get a little closer to each other to hear and not be intimidated by proximity to another human being.
I wish this article was written by a 65+ person. This group has time and money to eat out, but not vocal cords to shout over everyone else. The "open concept restaurants" are a real torture.
1
As a person living with hearing loss, I was very disappointed to read your latest article. I find the noise in most NYC restaurants not only intolerable, but also a true impediment to socializing with friends and family. Simple architectural and/or design changes could dampen the sound significantly, yet maintain the modern vibe. If restaurants do not learn to lower the volume, customers will begin voting with their feet. I certainly do. If you have hearing loss, read my tips for dining out here: https://livingwithhearingloss.com/2016/02/02/how-to-choose-a-restaurant-when-you-have-hearing-loss/
6
Acousticians have something to say about this. See a recent article from "Acoustics Today" (https://acousticstoday.org/ambient-noise-is-the-new-secondhand-smoke-daniel-fink/)
One proposal is to label food establishments much like food safety ratings. Then at least you'll know what you're getting into.
1
Totally disagree. Love quiet eating. Also, modern hearing aids can be eq'd and even directionally controlled with your phone. Shame on you for spreading inaccurate information about current hearing aid technology.
4
Pete, have you lost your mind because of the din? Go to Japan, what a pleasure, quiet, polite, delicious food. Then rethink.
3
People ... people who need people ... are the noisiest people in the world. The only enjoyable meals I can recall in an atomosphere of talk/music hubbub has been at well-lubricated large tables. As a couple, and certainly alone, the object is uninterrupted and nuanced occasion for contemplating the food and the one I'm with. (Bad music or factory acoustics are enough to force a walk out without ordering.)
1
If we go to a nice restaurant to enjoy fine wines and a great meal, and we have to scream at each other to have a conversation, that ruins the evening. We won’t go back.
5
Yeap, I realised that restaurants in New York have the same acoustic as bars and clubs overseas... maybe part of the (in)culture, no surprise that also only in New York is a common rule listening somebody's speakers on the subway.
2
I'm really disappointed in this article and I wonder about the motives for writing it. I go out to restaurants with people of many different ages, and across the generations, people complain --and even leave restaurants-- because of noise levels that prevent people from socializing. And I like crowded, happy places, too. But there is no point to going out, if all you can do is sit and eat and watch other people sitting and eating and trying to communicate across the noise. Most of the time the problem is loud music and televisions. People ramp up their voices to be heard over the piped in noise. If it were voices and normal restaurant noise alone, there wouldn't be a problem. This is a disingenuous representation of the problem and, again, I wonder why the author took this approach.
5
One of the reasons I moved to Maine was for silence. I am increasingly dismayed by the ubiquity of noise, music, television in every aspect of our daily lives. TV at the gas pump? WHY? Why can't we focus on the thing we're doing? We seem to need an endless stream of distraction.
I'm 59 but I've always hated loud restaurants, especially when I worked in them. I usually go to Caffe Nero for coffee simply because they play classical music at a low level and you can hear yourself think and other people talk. I don't want my adrenaline spiked in my daily life. It's not exciting, it's not healthy, and it's not smart.
4
Very loud music is restaurants is the aural equivalent of the hard chair — its sole purpose is to make diners notice the discomfort the moment they are satiated. So that they will leave and the next set of customers can be separated from their money.
Momofoku noodle bar is the epitome of this.
Metallica is played in full blast during 7 pm and 10 diners are squeezed into a seating arrangement for 8 people.
6
As a health issue, exposure to excess noise can lead to increased risk of high blood pressure & hearing loss. Why would anyone “enjoy” these adverse effects? I blame the builders and architects for design errors that allow (if not actually encourage) loud reverberated and reflected noise. Too many hard surfaces and a lack of adequate sound absorption installed makes it difficult to communicate while dining. Loud, tasteless music is prevalent most everywhere in America: coffee shops, transportation lounges/hubs, gyms. So it is not surprising that dining rooms would be an exception. I will flee immediately when confronted with a noisy environment as I value my health more than the food experience.
1
This strikes me as missing the point a bit. Yes, it's great to go to a public space and hear a pleasant buzz of voices and be able to catch snippets of other people's conversations. But that's not what the complaints are about. They're about cavernous echoing spaces with as many tables packed in as the space will hold, and with music so loud that people have to raise their voices to be heard over it, which makes the people at the next table raise their voices even more, and so on until everyone is shouting and the din is unbearable. I suppose some people like it because they've learned to associate noise with being in the popular, happening place.
7
Great article, and a popular subject, judging by the comments. I wish I could enjoy noisy restaurants, and occasionally I still do, but as we get older it's really irritating, especially when you're shelling out ridiculous money to be there. I never understood those 'Over 55 Only' retirement places until I turned 40, at which point I started hating having to hear kids whining and fighting, or gurgling, screeching, etc. . So diners, do your homework and 'Know Before You Go's to a restaurant about how noisy it is. If that's not possible, try and get a table away from the noise, hard to do but at least you tried. And restaurants, try to be professional with your music volume and choice of artists, remember, we're there to eat, not marvel at your esoteric and extremely hip taste in popular music. And young parents, if you can't afford a babysitter, stay home.
3
Excessive noise makes a mockery of the words "hospitality industry". This is a first: the first time I have been extremely disappointed in a Pete Wells review. I do not go to restaurants to scream across the table at my companions, let alone my spouse.
When the waitstaff cannot hear us order because the ambient sound level is cacophonous, you can rest assured I will enjoy my food, pay my bill....and never, ever return.
3
I admire your taste, review skills, and writing but, on this issue, you are wrong. You are over-thinking. No one wants a hushed restaurant. My favorite restaurant is always busy and there is a cheerful buzz. However, even when seated next to large parties, I have no trouble conversing at normal levels with people at my table. I can instantly name three restaurants where everything was positive except fot the noisiness that precluded a return visit. My criterion is : Can I understand what my wife across a small table is saying? The famous Little Goat Diner in Chicago featured a server who said it took a long time for her hearing to return after a shift. The Pearl in Columbus, Ohio, required us to communicate in sign language. The winner is Melograno in Philadelphia where I got the impression that noise enhancement technology was installed and I had to lip read when the waiter spoke. Defending this dynamic is perverse.
4
For me, some loud restaurants are intolerable because the acoustics are harsh and painful. Others are loud but dampened and can be fun in the right mood.
2
Wow! Have I stumbled into the AARP forum?? At no point in the essay does Pete Wells express either a preference for or approval of excessively loud music or conversation in a restaurant. Most of the commenters here seem to think he's advocating Metallica concert-level volume in all NYC restaurants. Not so. He's simply expressed his opinion that a lively buzz of conversation with appropriate background music adds to his enjoyment of a night out. If you prefer monastic silence, eat at home. Alone. The fact is that there are simply places that cater to a younger crowd & that means playing the music they like at the volume they enjoy. There are plenty of places that cater to an older clientele who find it harder to converse over the sound of loud music. Seek them out and give them your business. Every restaurant can't be all things to all diners. I'm lucky enough to have my hearing intact, but my husband isn't so fortunate, so there are just places we don't dine at. NYC has plenty of eateries. Surely you can find one that suits you. When did we become a city of cranky old wet blankets?!
2
Many thoughtful comments from readers old and young. My only addition would be to say that Pete Wells is blaming the victim here. We diners should not be chastised for under-appreciating the restaurant experience. Instead, the owners (who seem to be invisible in this article) are the guilty parties.
3
The current restaurant series of unfortunate events can be reduced some by tablecloths, napkins, wood furniture & some upholstery. Just reducing clatter in main dining area is a help. And especially turning down the volume on what’s ostensibly background music.
But who couldn’t enjoy a meal at home? It could be take-out or just some basic, simple dishes like eggs, comforting, quick, inexpensive & nutritious. Take your business & hard earned money elsewhere - home.
2
The simple, undisputed fact is that exposure to really loud noise, even if it's only a short blast, causes at least temporary hearing damage, and constant exposure causes permanent damage. So go ahead and revel in your "hip" restaurant noise. When, sooner rather than later, you need a hearing aid, you'll regret it just as surely as sun-worshipers regret all those long, glorious days on the beach when the dermatologist says, "It's malignant. "
2
Restaurant architects must consider the sound design, not just the visual aesthetics. (Yelp has started to post noise level in some of their ratings! Yes!)
I agree restaurants have become bird estuaries, screaming, cackling, conflicting places where sound is the only constant.
When we built our venue a major consideration was noise. After extensive research the choices we made reduced the sound considerably. Entertainers love it, why? There is little sound reverberation which translates into a better experience. Our guests can talk normally while enjoying their food and our staff can hear the guests.
1
Wrong.
I was in Germany over Thanksgiving week...major cities, popular restaurants.
Not a SINGLE one played music...and they were packed. People spoke, witnessed very few phones at the table...it was a pleasant murmur, not an unpleasant din.
Tablecloths and cushioned seats were abundant as well...but why would I want to be comfortable while I dine?
7
Eat early bird specials. The volume is low because the average age is high. Makes eating out a pleasure
1
Thank you Pete Wells! I love a noisy restaurant. To me it means things are happening. people re having fun, the restaurant is s success - usually.
Having spent the last 15 years a a food writer, many of which were as a restaurant reviewer., I get the same comments from people. But I champion the noisy restaurant again ang again.
Thank you for speaking up.
if restaurants didn't have music playing the ambient noise level would be tolerable. people have to talk over the music, then have to talk over the other talk. the music is usually some electronic fuzz that is not worth listening to anyhow
5
OK - so some people like, or at least put up with loud restaurants. Others, like me, hate the noise level. I avoid going to noisy restaurants - so they lose my business. Do people avoid restaurants that are not so loud that a conversation is actually possible without yelling? I doubt it. So - if you’re a loud restaurant (and designing a restaurant that doesn’t augment sound is not difficult) you are losing business. Seems like a bad choice.
8
One Sunday evening, we were at an elegant restaurant after a day of babysitting a newborn. and the mother at the table next to us thought nothing of pulling up a music video on her phone of Wheels on the Bus and playing it loudly for her toddler. Las Sunday evening at a family restaurant, we were seated next to two mommies with 8 children under the age of 9. The kids fought over their shared franks and fries and loudly clamored for their mothers' or siblings' attention. I can never understand why children accompany parents to expensive, grown-up restaurants. Yes, babysitters are expensive, but if your children can't sit quietly at a meal, they don't belong in a restaurant ruining other people's nights out.
22
I've had lunch with my grand-kids at McDonald's that were quieter than lunches I'v had at some expensive restaurants.
9
Restaurants are not in the food business. Although food is important .... restaurants are in the entertainment business. People love crowed restaurants and if there is a wait so much the better. People love to be with other people. Nothing is as sad as an empty quiet restaurant.
Fact is resturants are designed intentionally acoustically to enhance noise. It is no accident.
Would be nice to actually talk to the people you came with...and while we are at it, read the menu!
On one trip to Florida I went to Tiger Woods restaurant. beside the food being kinda boring, there were TVs blaring everywhere.
He should repurpose The Woods as a sports bar ONLY and be honest about it! There is nothing i would call an upgrade from the sports bar experience. Actually in some ways it was a downgrade. In a sports bar, we expect loud with cheering and such. But the cheering was missing, just lots of blaring1
Okay so this is a direct quote "The truth is, I love them. Not all of them, not all the time. I enjoy more than a few quiet restaurants, too..." However it does express the feeling I share with you, I guess you could say I took the words right out of your mouth. Hope you don't mind.
Okay so this is a direct quote "The truth is, I love them. Not all of them, not all the time. I enjoy more than a few quiet restaurants, too..." However it does express the feeling I share with you, I guess you could say I took the words right out of your mouth. Hope you don't mind.
Din is unacceptable for dinner music. Chefs make my ordered food look and taste terrific if i don't have to listen to the next table talking about their gout, troubles or fantasies. Or lately, a few places have gone so far as to let food hang off our served plates: Really, Bellevue Thirteen Coins, we won't be back for the extra long fake-eyelashed server whispering pasted eggs instead of basted, nor the half hour wait for burned sausage and egg meals!
1
To rationalize excessive noise levels in restaurants along purely aesthetic lines and present it as, at worst, an inconvenience to the diner ignores the science behind noise induced hearing loss - and thus comes off as glib and dismissive of a real public health hazard. The writer is likely unaware of the risk at which the diner is placed (to say nothing of the wait staff) and, with "good hearing" himself, is uninformed about the impact of hearing loss on the life of a person who lives with it.
Trust me and some 40 million people in the US who must manage communication from moment to moment without good hearing that it is a very big deal. It is only with access to excellent hearing health care that includes rehabilitative resources, opportunities to develop self-advocacy skills, and reliable information – as well as the finances to pay for hearing aids - that the potential for an interruption in relationships, employment, and overall health is lessened.
I hope that the critic educates himself by visiting the website of Hearing Loss Association of America (HLAA) at www.hearingloss.org. There is ample information about hearing loss, including that which is induced by excessive noise, and how to best build a life around it. See also information about noise induced hearing loss on the website of National Institutes of Health / National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. https://www.noisyplanet.nidcd.nih.gov/hearing-loss-science
10
If your waiter has to crouch so you can yell your order directly into their ear, the noise levels in the restaurant are too high. The design switch to hard surfaces everywhere has contributed to overall noise, so that normally tolerable levels of music and talk become unbearable in these minimalist echo chambers. No one should have to shout to a companion that's only two feet away--that's the kind of noise people are complaining about.
11
Noise reflection in a restaurant is exactly what the author missed and a prime reason why someone with good hearing can lose a conversation in a noisy area. We don’t demand cloister silence, but we go to restaurants for food and to socialize. Try an experiment. Go out to eat with your friends and wear earplugs. You’ll find yourself withdrawing because you miss parts of the conversation.
1
Sitting in a trendy restaurant in Chicago, screaming at my husband across an 18 inch table, our conversation degraded to "What?" "What?" Even thought the food was wonderful, the dining experience was not charming, nor comfortable, nor cheap. I added it to my "never again" list.
8
I was quite disheartened to read this article. Mr. Wells seems to completely disregard the permanent, damaging effects of noise on our ears. I am not a doctor, however, I know that hearing loss is progressive and permanent. We are already bombarded with so many loud noises that we cannot avoid so why not encourage restaurants to try to address this problem? As a 57 year old woman I understand there will be plenty of places that people, mostly younger than me, will want to frequent where they will not mind the noise. Mr. Wells, however, appears to be endorsing loud restaurants. Has anyone ever really reveled in listening to the “skipping rhythm of flirtation; the confident bleat of people showing off money; the squawk of debate”? I didn’t think so and I have no idea what the first two even mean or how they make noise. Last time I checked showing off money didn’t cause hearing damage in its high decibels. Mr. Wells’ justification for loud restaurants was quite interesting; that when “ everybody at a party goes quiet at once, maybe the Christmas tree catches fire”. What? This justification for loud restaurants is ridiculous. He’s referring to events that make people stop talking not situations where people can’t hear themselves speak because of the noise. Shame on you Mr. Wells. I am glad “most of your” hearing is “intact” for now and I am sorry that being able to “concentrate on the food and the conversation” are not priorities for you. I thought you were a food critic.
13
I do understand. For some occasions a pumping sound track, almost no lights and shouting to be heard by the person next to me is a fun, invigorating experience. But it obviously blocks enjoyment of the food and wine. If I am at a restaurant for the party/social scene, fine; but if I am really interested in what the chef is creating, give me a quiet space. Would I enjoy an exhibit of art in a disco? Typically not I want to choose what I need for the moment. Giving me guidance about sound and lighting levels in reviews let's me make an informed choice.
3
noise seems to be the American dining experience...have a meal in most of Europe, and its a quiet, relaxing time...count me European
6
The issue of noise for the audially sensitive in restaurants apart, prefering "to eat at home, because it is cheaper" equates enjoyment of food to its price and ignores its quality. I am neither a profligate gastrotourist nor a seeker of Michelin three-star restaurants, but I am fully aware of the difference in the various kinds of seafood between those prepared at home or in a reputable restaurant.
1
I had the great misfortune of dining at Catch at the Aria resort in Las Vegas this weekend. The menu had something for everyone; the food was, in most cases, dreamy. And the whole meal was a misery thanks to the ear-splitting noise in the place.
A little noise is fine. But when the person sitting two feet from me responds with "What?" to nearly everything I said to him? That's a problem. Having to constantly raise the vocal production to shout every conversation - combined with intense listening as you try to glean what your dining companions are saying to you - quickly leads to exhaustion.
And how often have you enjoyed a meal that exhausted you?
12
If noisy restaurants are unbearable for people with normal hearing imagine how hard it is for those of us who have mild to profound hearing loss. I frequent NYC restaurants often with family and friends, and they always try to be sensitive to noise levels in planning our meals. Background music is the worst culprit. Not only are many of us unable to hear, but these special events which should be celebrated are often ruined because we cannot communicate effectively leaving us feeling isolated and disconnected. Besides that, what are these noise levels doing to people who work in restaurants from wait staff to the head chef. It seems high noise levels should be considered an occupational hazard. My daughter is a professional chef, and I never want her to end up losing the precious gift of sound. So yes, it is harmful, and something needs to be done about it. Other aspects to consider would be how loud noise affects stress levels and if it can cause dangerous inflammation or other health hazards. I'm not a medical professional, but it seems like common sense to consider all this.
8
@Mary Grace Whalen Eating at noisy restaurants stresses me out more than the messy kitchen when when dine at home.
2
The lengthy argument is still nothing. Disagree completely. When a Friday evening concert in the main central staircase at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, with little tables scattered around where you could order a light meal and drink was so loud the waitress couldn't hear your order without bending her ear into our faces, I despaired of encountering pleasant public spaces. Hardly a race venue. No thank you to mind numbing noise, crowd control technique.
4
I thought I was the only one that noted that restaurants are increasingly loud. I’m glad you shared this concern however you missed the point.Restaurant management deliberately crank up the volume and if you politely ask to turn it down they reply that’s what the customers want for atmosphere. I dine out to enjoy the cuisine and have quiet nice enjoyable conversations with my spouse & friends and not incessant noise.
7
When dining out at "odd" hours - a late lunch for instance, we ask wait staff to turn down the volume. As the only people in the room, shouldn't be a problem, right? Some staff have told us that they cannot, the boss/owner wants the loud vibe. We leave. Others, thank us, some profusely. Workers say it's tough not being able to hear customers place their orders or having to repeat the nights' specials over and over. One woman told me that after she leaves work her ears ring for hours. We've been asked more than once to tell the manager, to plead their case about the deafening noise. It reminds me of the days when people smoked and the wait staff paid the price.
6
You are both right, and very very wrong. Yes, it is the sound of humanity; yes, it's a sign of energy; yes, we cannot always have what we want. But in many places noise levels are TOO loud, and that is the fault of architects, restaurant designers and whoever installed that sound system that makes it all so much worse. I believe this is a "trend" and if we wait long enough, we'll see noisy places once again deemed crude and quiet places attracting the best people. My criteria: If have to lean in, or use my "teacher voice" to speak to the person directly across the table, then the restaurant has failed--and I won't be back, no matter how good the food.
4
I think many restaurants deliberately design noisy interiors -- hard surfaces that amplify sounds. They do it because younger people want to be where "it's at."
Well, I'm not young and I hate to have to shout at my dinner partner to carry on a conversation. I don't think I'd feel any different if I were young. I find noisy restaurants oppressive.
7
Noise pollution is a serious environmental and public health policy issue, underrated at best, unrecognized at worst
To speak directly re restaurant noise, it's the DJ aspect of it that is torturous. Fine, when the place is empty if the volume is higher, but when the place fills up, the volume should go down, not up
Diners do not need to compete with a sound system, that's what clubs are for
6
Once upon a time, restaurants had tablecloths, carpeting and drapes. All that material helped absorb sound.
Now we've got bare tables, bare floors and bare windows.
And noise. Maybe the styles will change back.
5
When I dine out with friends, I want good food and pleasant conversation. If we cannot talk to each other, what is the point of having dinner? There are restaurants in my neighborhood that I simply won't go to. I don't understand why some people enjoy high decibel noise.
11
Sounds like Mr Wells is more enamored with the sound of his own powers of observation than an ability to separate a pleasant experience from one of making due under the circumstances.
9
Dining out is a social occasion for most of us; not so for Mr. Wells. He is required to eat out for his job, probably more than a dozen times a week. I would venture often solo. To say that "from time to time, all of us want a dinning room where we can speak and be heard" is ridiculous. Maybe I need to subscribe to the Washington Post if they are considerate enough to be concerned about my overall experience.
5
It took me a few years and restaurant $checks, but I learned the hard way--restaurants with high ceilings are always noisier. I skip em.
1
Too loud is a problem, especially when near screaming at each other while trying to smile.
I own a commercial building that has a restaurant as one of the tenants. When the first restaurant tenant move in...newly remodeled to his wants... I realized the noise was too much during the times of business. I ordered recording studio baffles for installation on the ceiling which cut down the echo, as such, in the room... much better.
I think trying to accommodate to more is the better idea.
2
Lots of us have mild hearing loss that makes it hard to understand conversations with competing sounds. We just can’t go to restaurants with loud music and design that makes conversation louder.
3
The louder the music the louder people's voices, it's intolerable to me. Alcohol consumption loosens inhibitions and people get louder and louder. They are too accustomed to talking over the TV at home. If I can't have a conversation at my own table, I just want to get through dinner an leave as soon as possible. The dinner is completely ruined and I wish we had not come. To me, a quiet restaurant means well mannered diners.
4
Couldn't disagree with you more. I desire a restaurant to provide me good food, a good atmosphere, and an opportunity to have a conversation with those I dining with. I don't want to share my conversation with those not at my table, or to have the conversations of those not at my table intrude on me.
The good news is that you will continue to provide information about noise levels. Beyond that, as you have stated your bias about sound levels, I encourage your other readers to do what I will do going forward--lower your assigned ratings and positive comments about loud places, and increase the ratings and mitigate the negative comments about quiet ones, in choosing places to eat.
6
Pete’s been reading too much of his own, mostly favorable press, what with food truck reviews, the democratization of dining and three star restaurants in the boonies, etc. Excessive and clinically dangerous noise levels in restaurants is non-negotiable. Time for Pete to pursue another livelihood.
7
A lot of the noise problems are in the interior design of the particular restaurant. Popular industrial or slick modern open designs will echo and amplify the sound levels. Designs with softer materials and more nooks and crannies will tend to deaden sounds and be more conducive to conversation. If you want a restaurant where you can converse with your table mates, look at its interior design.
My observation is a bit different. Even when the ambient noise does not require loud speech, many people seem to think they are speaking at an appropriate volume when and only if they can be heard at a table some distance away. The idea of privacy seems to have been altered in a fundamental way.
8
Over the past few years, I have asked various restaurant people why their restaurants are so unpleasantly loud. Some agreed with your idea that they use methods to encourage the noise because it makes a restaurant seem popular, the trend of the moment. But many also admitted that it's really about table turnover. They make people just uncomfortable enough so that they do not linger in conversation, and the restaurant can get an extra seating in each night.
The noise isn't just voices, or "us." Some restaurants put noisy machines in a corner of the dining room, including espresso makers or even ice crushers. We've struggled to hear in rooms set next to karaoke, hibachi grill clanking, and bar TVs, all set up without any attempt to quiet the activity. Decor trends, including concrete floors and walls, ceilings with mirrors, and walls full of windows, are also choices made by the restaurant owner to increase noise levels. And yes, there are noises from voices because many restaurants have opened up walls between the main dining room and their bars, so that we get roaring drunk patrons just a few feet away. Their "table turnover" techniques have turned us away.
9
@Locavore I agree. There was an article how restaurants are avoiding serving desserts because people linger at the tables and they want us out of there. We have to pick our places carefully, I guess
1
Seriously, dude? Restaurants have gotten noisier and noisier on purpose, because (per Kate Wagner's 2018 piece in The Atlantic) they are more profitable that way. Loud environments cause people to drink more and eat more. Like you, I also miss the newsrooms where I once worked, now muffled and bereft of typewriters and conversation. But there are 40 million Americans with moderate to severe hearing loss, including a great many of us who like to eat out with friends and family, and struggle to do so. Just as a diehard vegan cannot capably review a barbecue restaurant, a restaurant reviewer with excellent hearing -- congrats on that! -- cannot understand the actual dining experience for millions of us for whom ambient noise not only impairs speech comprehension but creates physiological distress. You're out of your depth, Pete.
15
I don't know where people are going to eat all the time but I'm 35, live in Manhattan, go out to new "trendy" restaurants in NYC all the time (1-2x a week), and very rarely (so rarely that I can't even remember the last time) encounter the chaotic hellscapes of unbearable noise everyone is mentioning here. I'll also add that I don't have great hearing (too many years of maxed out earbuds). Is everyone only going to clubstaurants that I don't know about?!?! I'm also not encountering blaring TVs much either unless I'm going to a sports bar to watch the World Series or a football game in which case, yeah, that's why I'm there.
Yes, we can all agree restaurants have gotten louder over the years but, as many have commented on, this is largely due to design. I have to say I was gobsmacked every time I read a comment here recommending (or reminiscing wistfully about) carpeting, curtains, and white tablecloths. Definitely does not sound like the kind of restaurant I want to frequent in this day and age. What does that leave? Super expensive sound muffling materials that are discreet enough that they are almost invisible? Yeah, that sounds realistic in a world of single digit profit margins (if you're lucky).
1
@SCR - You answered your own question. You destroyed your hearing with maxed out ear buds, so now can hardly hear the din. Congratulations.
3
Left out of the article the unnecessary noise made by children whose parents forgot to tell them to speak at a lower decibel. Just because the parents think it’s cute, not necessarily those dining around them agree.
7
@RJG One Sunday evening, we were at an elegant restaurant after a day of babysitting a newborn. and the mother at the table next to us thought nothing of pulling up a music video on their phone of Wheels on the Bus and playing it loudly for her toddler. Las Sunday evening at a family restaurant we were seated next to two mommies with 8 children under the age of 9. The kids fought over their shared franks and fries and loudly clamored for their mothers' or siblings' attention. I can never understand why children accompany parents to expensive, grown-up restaurants. Yes, babysitters are expensive, but if your children can't sit quietly at a meal, they don't belong in a restaurant ruining other people's night out.
Here in England, Evelyn Waugh took up with the Good Food Guide in the Sixties the subject of music in restaurants. Why is it needed? One can make an exception for Inidian music in Indian restaurants. And one thinks of the chamber music in the film Brief Encounter's tea shop.
3
I recommend purchasing from Amazon and bringing along the Portable Cone of Silence. Restaurants would be wise to offer the same for a premium.
1
In France, one can enter a huge, crowded restaurant and hear only a murmur. They talk under the noise, whereas Americans talk - yell - over it. A local chef whose food we liked came out of his kitchen to berate us after we asked the waiter to dial down the music so we could talk to our guests. Chef told us loudly that the music was for him and the kitchen crew to keep them energized. We didn’t go back; restaurant closed.
7
Good article. Two key statements to point out that are so very true: 1. "Restaurants are loud because we’re loud. With a few exceptions, when we complain about the noise, we’re complaining about ourselves."
2. "As of yet, nobody has figured out how to slice and splice and manipulate the way we respond to one another when we’re having fun together. That’s the signal in the noise."
1
Most noise levels at NYC restaurants are NOT due to just normal conversation in a full restaurant. It is the interior design that has purposely been done to amplify all sound, especially the ambient sounds. From stone or tile floors, to plastered walls to metal ceilings may seem to be done for a sleek and chic look but are really done to increase the noise level.
Only eaters under 35 enjoy this cacophony where not only the noise distraction is tolerated but also the hugely rude cell phone behaviour - like talking on your phone while eating with someone! Either Pete Wells is under 35 or has a schadenfreude for the younger set, but he certainly has no concern for the rest of us who suffer when we go out.
7
I have decided that restaurants have deliberately designed the interior spaces with hard edge surfaces which magnify diners conversations to a horrendous sound level as everybody has to compete with each other shouting to be heard .
They think that by raising the decibel level to painful that diners will see the restaurant as a really cool and lively place. In fact the noise level suppresses any attempt to conduct any kind of thoughtful conversation and the din in some restaurants is actually painful to the ears. We just walk out of those places. The under 30's don't seem to mind. Maybe they like shouting at each other. They can look forward to getting hearing aids by 50.
And what is with the multiple TV's mounted all over the place? Don't we see enough TV that we have to be distracted while dining out as well?
3
A reviewer typically visits on multiple nights. That's enough information to give a comment about the level/type of noise, which is all that's required; no need to take a stand of any kind, just include it along with all the other information customers would like to know before deciding whether to eat somewhere.
5
THE WHOLE WORLD WANTS THEIR MUSIC LOUD. (yes, all caps because even in the soundless space of cyberspace people want to shout!). Why? Because they are hard of hearing? Some yes. Because they don't want to have to spend a moment in SILENCE? Probably. Mostly because it's grown that way: from teens to senior citizens walking around with "buds" in their ears at 100 decibals, calming soothing low volume music is not in style. We are living in a hyperactive world, multitasking even at the dinner table. Rap music in the background isn't enough, you got to have the TV blasting a program you only half watch. Walk on the street, don't look at the scenery because you are talking to someone on your IPhone. So why should it be any different in a restaurant? I admit, I love MY music loud but only where the sound waves don't impinge upon anyone, like in my car with my surround sound stereo (and not with the windows down to turn it into a mobile boom box!). We talk about air pollution, water pollution, soil pollution, but sound pollution of all genres is a fact. My solution to the noisy restaurant situation is just not to frequent one. If I walk in and it's too loud for me I just walk out throwing a comment over my shoulder to the waiter or whoever from the business is there: Your food might have gotten 3 stars but your loud environment gets me out the front door.
4
According to the World Health Organization, billions of adults and children will damage their ears every year, and that hearing loss and deafness is mostly preventable.
Our ears not only allow us to hear, they also control balance, and are connected to the proper functioning of our eyes.
The food you eat is only as good as your ability to properly digest it. As it produces neurotransmitters that are vital for proper brain function. The stomach has been called by some scientists as the second brain.
We're killing ourselves by over indulging ourselves with poor nutrition, and then add insult to injury by eating in an environment that assaults our senses and sensibilities, and undermines our digestion.
We pay for the privilege to do so, literally and figuratively.
3
Loud music is anathema to me when it interferes with conversation and digestion. I become physically uncomfortable when I am forced to listen to relentless loud music, not of my choosing, and often musically insipid to boot. When dining alone, I would prefer to read my book, something the noise level in restaurants often renders impossible. When with companions, I want to converse, not yell. We are inundated by unwanted sounds. When paying for a meal, it is not too much to ask to be granted a reprieve.
8
"Noisy" is such a vague term that I can't decide whether I agree with Mr. Wells. How loud is "noisy?" I'm skeptical that the "noise activist's" proposal that the government regulate noise levels in restaurants is practically enforceable. Such regulation is not analogous to the smoking ban because the smoking ban is a blanket ban but it is impossible to impose a blanket ban on noise. For instance, would the regulation pertain only to music or would it apply to human voices too? Moreover, noise levels change minute to minute. One minute the noise level may exceed the legal maximum but the next minute it falls below that level. Finally, second-hand smoke poses a lethal risk to one's health and while deafness is a significant hazard, it is not life-threatening. I am not a "markets are magic" ideologue but this may be one of those problems we should let the market sort out.. If you don't like restaurants you consider "noisy," then eat elsewhere. There are plenty of restaurants that do not offend my sensitive ears.
@AB Noise does damage to hearing when it reaches a certain dB level for a certain amount of time. In other words, it's not only peak volume that matters -- duration of exposure matters, too. For this reason, employees are more at risk than any diner. That's not to say that diners couldn't be hurt by the noise, of course. For this reason, I believe that this is a workplace safety issue, which means that OSHA is the relevant regulatory agency. They have chosen not to enforce these regulations up to this point, unfortunately.
8
Does anyone care about the servers?
OSHA requires hearing protection at 85 decibels. Restaurant owners, customers and critics need to show some concern for the health risk to staff.
20
Loud is a cheap way to make a restaurant seem active and hot - and to turn over tables quicker. The "cheap Trick" is not limited to restaurants. I like to go to my gym in the middle of the morning and afternoon when it is less crowded. Equipment is readily available. Alas, quiet is not. The gym cranks up the music to make the place seem busier than it is.
It's noise pollution in both.
7
There is a difference between sound and noise, a point not accurately captured in this article since the terms are used interchangeably. Sound is acceptable and pleasant. Noise is not.
For the most part, a hum of conversation with music at a reasonable volume in restaurants (or even a hospital room) is desirable. Complete silence is not often the preference.
When restaurants increase the volume of the music, conversations fight with it, and everything escalates, creating a noise war. This can be managed.
Additionally, I've always contended that there is a fine line between having fun, and having fun at someone else's expense. Tables that become too loud should be managed in a polite fashion, so that everyone has an opportunity to enjoy themselves.
7
Music in the background? Unnecessary.
People will leave if there's no music?
Hardly.
For balanced people, a quiet restaurant is invigorating, inviting a pleasant conversation to ensure excellent communication.
10
Having read this article twice, I still have no idea what Mr. Wells is trying to say. It seems like he is giving a pass to restaurants that depend on his reviews to stay in business.
That being said, I simply do not go back to restaurants that are too noisy to listen to a conversation. I appreciate Yelp and other reviews that mention the noise level and I will make choices on that.
There is more to dining than good food and I will chose comfort over noise pollution any time.
13
@Annie Chon - There does seem to be a symbiosis between restaurants and reviewers. Reviewers cannot exist without restaurants to review, so in some sense it's in Mr. Well's best interest to prop them up. Including the noise level in his reviews may keep away a significant number of potential diners, making him less popular with the establishments he depends on to make a living.
1
Try a crowd sourced app called SoundPrint. I find it helpful for finding quieter restaurants.
Forums like this are great for us to unload our pet peeves—we don't have to shout to get someone to listen! Mr Wells does an admirable job arguing for the mental health value of being wrapped in the sound of ones community. By using more intelligent restaurant design we could get this and still hear one another. But when restaurants chase "hipness", and hipness means noise, we're on a race to the bottom.
6
We've stopped going to restaurants where conversation is impossible. Recently, we were seated early at a lovely Thai place and were talking among ourselves, and as the seats continued to be filled, had to lift our voices so that by the end of the meal, we were just happy to get out of there since conversation was impossible. I'm definitely on team quiet.
11
As someone with acute hearing who goes to restaurants with two beloved family members with hearing loss/hearing aids, I think food establishments could benefit from including in their advertising that they maintain a pleasantly low-noise environment. High levels of canned music and customers who are shouting to hear each other are especially troublesome for those with hearing loss (who are, BTW, covered by the ADA). Or how about letting diners know that an area of seating is maintained as "low noise"? When a noise level is obnoxious, diners should always ask to speak with the owner/manager so as to explain in person why the YELP review of his/her business will be so negative.
5
And a second thought -- my family used to love gathering at restaurants to celebrate, well, anything. We do that rarely now, because we can't talk to anyone besides the person next to us, and even my grade school child finds himself stressed out by the noise ("it's just too much, mom, it makes me tired"). We're not particularly quiet people, we like a fun time. But now we eat at home, and are not supporting the restaurant economy, despite being lovers of new food.
14
Loud restaurants have caused us to rediscover the joy of meals cooked and eaten at home with friends. Sitting in a roaring restaurant unable to participate in the conversation because one can't hear or understand the people across the table because of the background din is simply no fun.
It doesn't have to be this way, restaurants in Europe operate with similar constraints of budget and space, yet create an atmosphere where conversation with friends is normal, expected, and enjoyable. No one has to shout, and those of us with older ears are allowed to participate. There's no way in which the experience (or the food) is less pleasurable.
12
Lord have mercy! Good food, good music and chatter, happy sounds! If that upsets one, one should stay away. Complaining incessantly is unwelcome sound and fury, but I love eating in good restuarants, and only very rarely am offended by the noise.
That said, once in Rome with 7 friends in a fine restuarant one Roman was offended by our laughter and general happy conversation (his tablemates apolized for him) but after his complaint we toned it down a little.
Pete is most definitely not clueless. Tacky televisions are a little bothersome but we dont have to look and finer spots dont usually have them and tastes are unaccountable for. Vive la difference.
2
@Bob Oh, Alabama. You probably did make a lot of noise in that Roman restaurant. When I’m abroad, the loudest voices I hear on the street, in shops, in restaurants, in airports, are the voices of my countrymen.
1
“... one Roman was offended by our laughter and general happy conversation (his tablemates apolized for him) but after his complaint we toned it down a little.”
How considerate of you. A restaurant is not a club. If you want to essentially party with your friends, go to the latter, where you can carry on loudly all night.
1
This article by the New York Times critic surely proves that civilized dining is dead. Personally, I don’t go to a restaurant to have a party. I want to escape from the noise and chaos of the outside world, and focus on the finer things and tranquility. Even in much of Europe, this experience is now lost. While I can better deal with the noise from conversation, it is the pervasive pounding rock soundtracks at high volumes that are the underlying culprit. Showing contempt for their patrons, restaurant managers are loath to adjust the volume level. Let’s hope that more and more people complain, and that some restaurants find a niche in providing a fine dining experience.
11
Interesting that Mr. Wells didn't bring up the fact that hearing loss, endemic in our society, is very much tied to prolonged noise exposure. Loud noises, repeatedly heard, actually are destroying our hearing. People who live in truly quiet places (not many of them left) do not have hearing loss with age.
Restaurants are currently designed in a way that amplifies noise. Televisions are often on, and music is played at louder levels than before because people have damaged their hearing listening to amplified music at levels that are destructive (the level of damage is a lot lower than most people realize).
Mr. Wells has written something purely subjective while flirting with the idea that there's some science in his article (the vibrations of tables of men versus women, sociological analysis, the thrum of genetics with reference to a 'very old sound'). His evasion of any real science behind listening, hearing and experience make this a topical, emotional piece that holds no resonance for me, even though it is a topic I'm interested in.
12
So Pete Wells likes noisy restaurants. But is his the majority opinion? I doubt it. It is possible to find pleasure, even joy, in a quiet restaurant, and many of us prefer not having to yell to be heard by our dinner companion.
11
What Europe is everyone in the comments visiting? There is a whole lot of the continent that isn't French fine dining! Europe has plenty of loud restaurants and bars where you have to yell to be heard. I've experienced this both in Western and Eastern Europe. I also don't agree that tables are spaced farther apart in Europe as a rule--again, you might find this in a fine dining situation, but not everywhere. There are certainly differences between dining between Europe and the US, but this seems like a grass being greener situation more than anything.
3
@gwen try Switzerland. Never been driven out by noise, either from music, tv, or the diners at the next table.
Mr. Wells seems to entirely miss the point, for many of us. The problem for me and my wife is not a really loud restaurant in which one cannot hear oneself think (I would just walk out of such a place). Rather, it's the problem of a single loud table, in which one or two (sometimes inebriated) people are talking so loudly that they dominate the room, and make it nearly impossible to have your own conversation. I have sat next to people loudly discussing the details of a revolting surgical procedure, bitterly complaining about their kids, etc. Recently, there was a table of middle-aged men earnestly describing their sexual conquests, making for a very uncomfortable dinner with my 12-year-old daughter. Last summer, at an outdoor cafe, a well-known NYC radio-talk-show host sat next to us, and almost immediately took a phone call from a friend having a personal trouble. The radio host remained where he was and proceeded to give very loud advice (as if he were on the radio). It was impossible not to hear it, and impossible to have our own conversation.
The problem, thus, is obnoxious behavior, inconsiderate to other tables, especially when the tables are only inches apart. This problem, while not new, has gotten worse, as it has in concert halls, movie theaters, and Amtrak coaches (among other locations), with an isolated, Internet-obsessed society that has little regard for the comfort of others when they're out in public.
6
Clearly those demanding sound regulation and soundproofing in the comments below have never worked in the restaurant business nor understand how tight our margins truly are. High rents and brutally expensive build outs limit what restaurateurs are able to do to mitigate noise. Current trends in restaurant aesthetics also do not allow for much sound proofing. The tile and hard surfaces the public prefers over carpet and acoustic tile are not conducive to mitigating sound. This is a hard enough industry to make it in without another demand for regulation.
2
@Samuel If there are more people like me, and that seems likely from the comments below, there would be no need for any regulation, as there wouldn't be any restaurants to regulate. I simply won't go to loud restaurants. I don't find the current trend in restaurant design to be hip or fun. I find it obnoxious, and no, I'm not old, and I still have my full hearing.
4
"From time to time, all of us want a dining room where we can speak and be heard without resorting to pantomimes."
This said it all. I don't want to EVER have to resort to pantomimes, unless I'm at a bar or concert.
9
Here in Portland OR the trend seems to be to use industrial spaces as restaurants with no sound mitigation. Sitting in a box or concrete the noise just bounces around and becomes intolerable with the increased density of patrons.
4
Peoples' ability to cope with background sounds varies quite a lot. Apparently the writer finds the extra stimulus to be energizing, whereas I find it depleting.
At the opposite end of the spectrum from "energized" are people like me, who have difficulty focusing on a conversation if another person is speaking nearby - even on a televison. Psychologists name it the "cocktail party syndrome" and it has nothing to do with hearing acuity. I've known it was a problem since childhood and my hearing is still good. I have attended countless dinners and parties where all I could do was read the expressions of people around me and try to nod or smile appropriately, because I couldn't understand a word.
I'm not promoting a new category of disability and I'm not looking for an accommodation. But restaurant owners should know that I'll turn right around and leave a restaurant if I open the door and hear a racket.
5
Dear Pete,
I don’t really care what your preference is on noise levels in restaurants, nor its justification. The New York Times should come up with some sort of scale and do its best to apply it. Of course it will vary due to day of week or time of day. Presumably you go more than once to a restaurant you review. Many newspapers across the country include information on noise levels in their restaurant reviews, as does Opentable. People seeking energetic noise levels will probably appreciate this information as much as those seeking to have conversations with dinner companions without yelling.
14
So grateful that I like my friends and family enough to actually hear what they have to say. Will continue to seek out and support restaurants that are not too loud. And, I know now to
take Mr. Wells' acoustical perspective with a grain of salt.
6
The noise in restaurants is becoming more and more intolerable. Where once carpeting helped muffle the sound, now hard surfaces amplify it. Perhaps you like noise in restaurants because you are there to do a job. Most of us go to restaurants to get together with friends as well as to eat. When you must shout to be heard, the experience is debased.
15
We are surrounded by din and cacophony. I need to escape from that, to shed the stress, to repair to a more tranquil state, especially at mealtimes. So I join my friends and we take our wallets and we vote accordingly with our feet.
8
I own a busy restaurant/bar and can tell you that the most important factor in noise at most restaurants are the guests themselves. One or two boisterous (joyous?) groups lift the volume for everyone, as every table starts to speak over each other.
Some nights we have a good steady rumble in the room and some nights it gets flat-out loud. The decor (and yes we design to limit noise) and music volumes don't really change, the guests do.
So customers can complain to restaurants about the noise, but often the issue is simply down to luck. Sometimes you get a few loud groups, sometimes you don't.
Pete Wells makes the good point that restaurants are not completely controlled environments, and that is part of the attraction. You may discover something new that you enjoy, or discover you don't like dark, crowded and noisy restaurants (or at least this version).
And finally, if the "loud" restaurant is full/busy the owner is very unlikely to change anything. Restaurants are still a business. If a majority of customers like it as it is, why change it for a vocal (if soft-spoken) minority?
1
@Stewart Why install ramps and doors that allow customers in wheelchairs to enter your restaurant? Why ban smoking in your restaurant? Why install handrails on the stairs to the bathroom downstairs? You might say you do these things because the law and building codes make you do it. And that might be true. But I'd also hope that you do these things because you aspire to have a restaurant that all people can enjoy for many years to come. People have preferences about noise levels, obviously, so they can choose to visit restaurants that meet their preferences. But the excessive noise in many restaurants is damaging to our ears -- employees and diners -- so it is no longer a question of diners' preferences. It's a public health consideration.
23
@Stewart And yet as many have pointed out, restaurants in Europe are consistently quiet, and restaurants in the US are consistently loud, and to me at least, torturous. I am still in my prime restaurant age and is fortunate and old enough to be able to afford them, and when we go we would order cocktails, bottles of wine, and desserts, as well as the normal dinners and salads. Yet I no longer even consider going to many of the restaurants where I live because of the noise. I want to have a good dinner and conversation with my friends, not to go to a frat party. You are right, restaurants are businesses, and I should think, would like to keep customers like me.
9
I really appreciate the info about sound levels that Sietsema includes in his reviews in the Washington Post, as mentioned in this article. One of my favorite restaurants, Bistro Aracosia, made some changes after Sietsema said that noise was a concern. It's now quite quiet, so maybe they went a bit overboard with the noise-cancelling panels and carpeting. The original patterned carpets were prettier. :)
To me, a noisy restaurant doesn't have a sense of energy; it just makes it difficult to have a conversation.
9
I agree wholeheartedly with the criticism of the appalling volume of restaurants and events. But left out is lighting. I had dinner with a group of 10 a few weeks ago in a trendy midtown bistro. Not only could I not converse with anyone not right next to me, but every single one of us had to use our cellphones as flashlights to read the menu, the lighting was virtually non-existent. The waiter simply shrugged when we commented on it. Combine that with a terrible ventilation and door design that turned the entire long narrow place into a freezing wind tunnel every time the door opened, and you couldn't pay me to return.
9
It seems that the problem is not the voices or servers or music as much as it is the lack of insulation in so many restaurants. The noise reverberates off tin ceilings, hard floors and wall surfaces.
Cork, padding, insulation would help ease the problem. And as someone over the age of 65, my friends and I resent having to scream over attendant noise nearly everywhere.
7
I disagree. Yes, a certain level of noise gives the feeling of life and is welcome, but restaurant’s could ameliorate unbearable racket by a judicious choice of ceiling tiles, fabrics etc. Instead, it seems they do the opposite. Many restaurants use hard and relective surfaces to up the noise level. I have been in restaurants where I’ve had to use earplugs ( I could still hear conversation). Any really noisy restaurant is crossed off my list.
5
I appreciate Pete Wells reflections, but for me, he misses a key point: design choices.The former DBGB on Bowery (NYC) is an excellent example. The large bar area was completely open to the dining room, as was the kitchen, and the dishes were stacked and stored in the dining room. Of course, all of the surfaces were hard and the music was loud. The sausages were amazing, but at the closely packed tables, my neighbors were literally yelling their conversation. I couldn't wait to get out. Obviously, the design was not an accident - it's a Boulud restaurant! Personally, I hope the days of college frat bar noise in a "real" restaurant are over.
6
I have sensitive hearing-- so even int 20's I found many places too loud-- but now I literally cannot hear anything in many restaurants, as it all becomes one large cacophony as i try to enjoy a meal with friends. We purposely hunt down and keep note of the places where we can actually hear each other, and enjoy the food without needing earplugs.
I am flummoxed that anyone would defend this bizarre 'trend'. Dining out should be pleasurable....not posturing as 'cool;, or tortuous.
13
Dining civility, like all other civility, has gone by the wayside. When I dine out with friends, I want to hear our conversation - not the next table, someone's children, the blaring TV or too loud music.
Which means I dine out rarely these days.
12
I recently heard a food critic say that the hip restaurants purposely install metal ceilings to support the noise. Not only to create the “vibe”, but to turn over tables. They want to sell their expensive drinks through meals, but discourage casual lingering with coffee.
9
I like your work, Pete Wells, but you're missing an obvious point here.
Restaurants claim they are struggling because people now prefer takeout to dining out.
Maybe if dining out were more pleasurable, it would be more attractive.
32
Pete, I give you 25 years, then age-related changes to your hearing with prompt you to re-write this article. In the meantime, enjoy the noise level while you can!
7
I suspect that 99.9% of noise complaints in restaurants are generated because music is being played far too loud. People walking about, diners talking or chewing their food with their mouths open are routine and rarely impact the dining experience. Music should be barely audible. Turn it down or off.
16
This is a problem that can probably be fixed with simple scheduling. If you make reservations during off hours (so, dinner at 4 or 5 pm) you will probably have a much quieter meal. I think it is the height of hubris to demand a quiet environment at 9 pm on a Saturday night when the restaurant is full and the cocktail are flowing freely.
1
I doubt that anyone who goes out to eat at 9 pm on a Saturday night expects a quiet environment. As a person with a variable work schedule, I often meet friends for a late Happy Hour or early dinner. If you still can’t hear the people sitting with you at the table when half of the tables in the restaurant are empty, the problem isn’t the noise generated by other diners. It’s the acoustics and ear splitting volume of the music.
6
No one who enjoys dining out is complaining about the sound of “unamplified voices.” Of course we love the hubbub of a crowded restaurant and a warm feeling of happy community. But increasingly at restaurants, these voices aren’t “unamplified.” They are increasingly *consciously* amplified by restaurant design — modern eateries’ ubiquitous exposed brick or metal interiors, for instance — so that happy hubbub is turned into a roar. The reason for this, a restaurateur once told me, is that restaurants consider themselves a form of entertainment, in competition with loud and boisterous nightclubs, bars, and superhero movies for young customers’ limited entertainment dollars.
You’re entitled to your tastes, of course; if you like a noisy restaurant, so be it. But don’t tell me what I’m objecting to is the sound of a happy dining hubbub. I’m not. I’m objecting to a deliberate trend towards turning restaurants into the aural equivalent of a rave.
18
@RGT A single restaurateur's opinion is not the definitive reason for all these noise complaints. I think people today expect to be catered to no matter what the cost to others.
Here is an analogy: The crowd at an NFL event is loud and boisterous (think the Super Bowl). I would not find this type of crowd enjoyable. Do I get to demand the venue make the crowd conform to my preference?
@Sue Decibel measurements at NFL games are notably lower than decibel levels in many restaurants. Your analogy breaks down on that simple fact. It also breaks down because you're presenting this solely as a question of preferences. Dangerous noise levels are a public health problem for employees and diners. This is not a debate about preferences -- it's a debate about restaurants deliberately designing environments that damage the hearing of people.
9
Pete Wells seems to be saying that restaurants can't prevent noise levels reaching horrible levels, except for moderating the music. That's ridiculous, of course they can! The acoustics can be changed by how the restaurant is designed. That includes the materials used for the walls and floors, etc. Another big factor is how close tables are placed, as well as the number of people crowded into the room. The problem is restaurants don't care...and Mr. Wells just made it easier for them not to care in the future.
12
I've just come back from a trip to London, having enjoyed marvelous food. A few experiences were far less appealing because British restaurants seem to be starting to mimic us, with head-pummeling sound tracks.
Noise in restaurants is a public health menace. Researchers are telling us that even minor hearing loss is implicated in the development of dementia (as reported in The New York Times). And as a person with migraine, I just can't take the decibel onslaught anymore.
9
Not to be able to have a conversation in a restaurant at all spoils the experience, however good the food and fun of the place.
Further, a noisy restaurant not doing so well may want to consider they lose people of a certain age because their hearing may not be as good and they never come back, ever.
5
It's really all about the music. As the restaurant gets busier, the noise of ordinary conversation gets louder. So management turns up the music, making diners talk louder still. It's unnecessary. We New Yorkers talk and talk and talk. We all have something to say, and the air is buzzing with it, electrical and energetic and fun. That's all the music we need.
4
For those of us with significant hearing loss, Restaurant noise is more than a distraction, it inhibits social interaction while dining. Restaurant dining is more than a gastronomic experience, it may be a family celebration or date night, all of which are impacted by noise. My prediction and hope is that restaurants will be rated in terms of noise levels as well as service and food quality.
8
In addition, there are any of us for whom loud noise is actually painful. I have asked servers and hostesses to turn down the music volume. Some have complied. Some have said that’s how the management likes it. I’ve let them know that I’m the one paying for the meal, and I will never return, even if the food is very good. “Really?, they ask. “Really”, I say. “Eating at your restaurant was an excruciatingly unpleasant experience.” I also let our friends know of our experience. The more people do this,the greater the likelihood that the noise will abate.
10
Noise levels contribute to all forms of miscommunication- worst case being wrong orders but otherwise depends on how much you value table conversation and what your companions have to say.
1
The noise in restaurants is clearly intentional. Why, otherwise, would we find so many pressed metal ceilings, tile or highly-polished wood floors and no attempt at sound absorption except for the tablecloths? Then there's the music, or what passes for music these days. Because the music is loud, diners have to shout on order to be heard. When one table is loud, the next has to be louder to allow communication. Some people sound like they have a microphone inserted in the larynx. As a person who has more than acute hearing (I sometimes think I could hear somebody open a Cracker Jack box in Yankee Stadium) I have found very few restaurants I can abide. It's too bad, because I love good food (and good restaurant reviews) and I love dining with friends. While it may be true that one night is different from another, it would still be useful to your readers to have decibel-level reporting. Those who want loud can go to those places you suggest are loud, or were loud on the evening you were there. Others, with more sensitive ears, could take a chance at a restaurant that was calm on the day you tried it. Give us a chance, at least.
11
Or do what so many seem to be doing in restaurants these days: texting and emailing on their phone, while sitting with others at the table.
It’s too loud to talk (or hear), so may as well text! ;)
3
I go to restaurants with loved ones to SHARE an experience eat good food along with pleasant conversation. It is obvious that LOUD noise is inimical to that shared experience. Raised voices do not go with good food! It's as if your companion is at the next table.
11
Man is a social animal and gravitates to where other are. But music performances in taverns have turned into endurance contests and karaoke has become a screaming match. Nobody listens because nobody can hear.
I will have my noise suppressors handy to cover both ears entirely. Still can hear everything just fine, including the conversation of people with whom I keep company, and I don't run the risk of premature hearing loss.
Yes, I'm sending a message to management. Wish more people would join me. Makes one sorry Dylan ever plugged in!
Vignette: once went to a restaurant. It was quiet enough, but the waitress started sweeping the entire floor before we finished eating - and we were well within the posted hours for closing. Never went back there again and the restaurant went out of business within a year. When I eat out, it's so I don't have to deal with certain chores at home.
Same with the noise. If it's uncomfortably loud, I don't go back, but at least let them know why. Especially those places that sandwich people in like sardines at tables right on top of each other.
You get what you pay for - or don't.
5
Breaking bread is a form of communion with friends and people you love. That means you are sharing ideas and feelings as you are (hopefully) enjoying what's on your plate. That means you have to be able to hear each other.
The deterioration of common courtesy in public today is endemic, whether on sidewalks, public transportation or in restaurants. Sorry Mr. Wells, I'm voting with my feet.
9
Perhaps background research and reporting would’ve bolstered this essay. Like comments from acoustic engineers (or whatever they’re called) and architects about sound design plus data on noise levels in various restaurants. Not to belittle Pete Wells’ analysis and insight; what gives him such a unique point of view - eating out in NYC every day and writing well about it - also skews his perspective away from what the average diner experiences.
2
Young Pete is only 33 years old, so give him a break. He will change his tune about noise levels soon enough. As most people get older, loud, chaotic ambient noise makes understanding the speech right in front of you more difficult to the point of impossible. And eventually the noise itself can feel painful.
At this point I turn around and walk out of places with high levels of noise - and those incessant large screen TVs. Ugh.
13
@Tim Carroll
No I will not give him a break. He does a disservice to his readers when he obviously discounts the needs and preferences of what are probably the majority of his readers.
1
Two comments: 1. A possibility not considered here is that we go to restaurants that are uncomfortably noisy because we like the food. I really appreciate restaurants where I can gave a conversation, but I would be sorry if I never ate at some fabulous but noisy restaurants. 2. Mitigating noise is fairly easy: space the tables a little further apart and incorporate noise absorbing materials in restaurant design. In the former case, you might lose a table or two, so maybe it’s not practical. In the latter, I would love to see ceilings and perhaps walls that would soak up noise. In this city, stamped tin ceilings became all the rage about 30-40 years ago, and every restaurant that installed or uncovered one suddenly had a noise level that made conversation very difficult.
2
Great article. I must say, I have found myself overwhelmed by noise levels in bustling restaurants. But there have been more times that I’ve left restaurants before being seated because of the deathly quiet.
Thank you for this article.
It made me realize that I prefer unpopular restaurants. They're quiet, there's no wait, you (hopefully) get quick and individual attention from your server, and -- most importantly -- there are no crowds, which is the cause for all of the above.
Given that this experience is actually somewhat more important to me than the food quality, I now know to avoid the top-reviewed restaurants and focus on more obscure locations.
2
After reading many of the comments, you really hit a nerve. I was in New York recently with my family for dinner and theater. I made a reservation at a French bistro and all that it implies. We walked in and immediately were assailed by the noise level. Of course, we couldn't leave. Even the server had to shout out the specials of the day. Mr. Wells, you're really off on that one.
10
I've been in many restaurants where the dining room is fine, but it's too close to the bar with the pounding music and the people screaming to be heard over the pounding music. At Beaubourg in Le District (not a star restaurant, but convenient to my hotel and a good example on this point,) if only that big opening between the restaurant and the bar were a window. Perhaps a double-paned window.
3
There is a generational divide on noise in restaurants, I suspect also one between restaurant professionals and the general public. Loud seems to be in with restaurants
But the message I get from agressively loud environments is that I, myself, am not welcome there.
Loud restaurants feel to me like an assault. The same as piped music in outdoor public spaces, and even worse, piped scent in public spaces.
There is plenty of variation in restaurant atmospheres that is less than cacaphony and more than a tomblike silence. It is disingenuous to suggest otherwise. There are plenty of people with some degree of hearing impairment. Should they not be welcome?
I could not disagree more with the article.
7
A fair assessment. Worst noise problem in my pat of the world: Fox News on TV. Actually TV (and especially any TV news) is a bad idea in a restaurant: rarely do they have decent speakers and the raw TV sound is grating. Next worst problem: music played to loud. Music should accompany, not dominate, a dining experience. The noise of people in conversation rarely bothers me (although I am among the aging population that hears less well that in times past). But I abhor being in the presence of a bunch of loud-mouthed drunken bores. But on the whole, the noise problem is not with other diners, and most of the time it is something that the restaurant owner can do something about.
But I have a useful defense mechanism: if the noise level is such that the quality of the food and the dining experience doesn't make up for it, I simply don't go there again. Actually I developed that technique during my 27 years in New York.
One restaurant in particular had a perfect balance of ambient conversation and other sound and the ability to have a conversating with your dining partner: the old Fuji Restaurant run by Pat Takei and Ohta-San. (I believe they sold it in the early 1990s, and I have no idea about the restaurant that kept that name.) That restaurant provided the finest experience in dining out that I have ever had in my entire life. No wonder I was there at least once a week.
2
Some people appreciate noise; others avoid it. It is, therefore, worth noting noise levels in reviews. (Much as one would comment on the food's spiciness, or the dining room's formality.
If noise was simply crowd enthusiasm, that would be one thing. Modern restaurants hire sound consultants to "sculpt" their aural landscape--often using hidden speakers,--to stimulate (and simulate) the din of popularity. These should be noted so that people can opt out, or in, accordingly.
3
I guess it behooves a restaurant to create noise distractions so diners can't truly appreciate how overrated the food is.
2
This is a privileged take. If a restaurant is too loud, it disadvantages several people, whether or not it bothers YOU. No one is hurt if a restaurant is "too quiet."
5
Perhaps the people you are eating with don't care to converse with you?
My father-in-law had poor hearing but loved good food and wine and was fortunate to have the money to enjoy both. When choosing a restaurant, the acoustics mattered for us as a result. We'd not go to "loud" places or seek the quietest table at louder (but still quieter than most American restaurants). At his favorite Italian restaurant in Bangkok (where he lived) he noticed that it was getting too loud for him and he spoke with the owner. My father-in-law was a textile manufacturer and he came back with acoustic tiles (which he hadn't really dabbled much in before), in the appropriate colors for the restaurant, and they were installed on the ceiling. It was magical because you could have a conversation and still hear the bubble and pop of restaurant life without it overwhelming you.
This is how it should be in ALL good restaurants.
8
The busiest bistro in Paris is less noisy, and more fun, than the soul-deadening din(s) of auditory iniquity Pete W. seems to find convivial.
The real problem with noisy restaurants is that they are exhausting....and dining out shouldn’t be a workout. Screaming to be heard for 2 hours is hard work, for body and mind, no matter your age.
John Curtas
Eating Las Vegas
12
Las Vegas restaurants are some of the worst offenders.
I like quiet restaurants. The music needs to be quiet so the diners can converse in softer tones.
5
I have one pet peeve about this issue: If a group of 16 people want to be seated for dinner, don’t push all the tables together back-to-back banquet style. It totally alters the vibe of the entire place when these people (especially after a few drinks) start shouting to one another from one end of the table to the other.
It makes much more sense to arrange two tables of 8 in the same vicinity of the restaurant. It is much easier for the group to interact with each other at some level and all the logistics of table service are much improved. But most importantly, this type of arrangement doesn’t overwhelm every other diner in the place - whether it’s the noise or most anything else.
1
This subject has been discussed over and over in Seattle, with mixed results. On one thing most of agreed. The design of restaurants over the years has changed. If you look up and down, you will notice the cause. Stone/concrete floors amplify and reverberate sound. The design of ceilings has the same effect.
So, yes, restaurants are noisier. As to whether or not that is beneficial, it is here that we probably diverge. And, yes, age is a factor.
4
When I was a graphic designer, loud music was a horrific problem. Producers assumed that all designers loved it, when many of us suffered. It interfered with our brains and had a negative impact on our productivity.
Through the years, I noticed that the loud monsters were usually technical. The better, creative designers didn't work with music.
As far as restaurants, we bypass blasting music by ordering take-out.
4
Don’t stop at ignoring noise levels, why not ignore prices, cleanliness and location too?
A culture critic’s entire purpose is to encourage us to try the new. I look forward to Well’s column for his educated food opinions, but he misses the point when he refuses to give readers the information they need to make a choice.
His personal opinions as an able bodied, middle aged man lack empathy and the sophistication of his food criticism. He’s still too young to understand that age comes to us all.
12
He's 33 years old. He admits his hearing is fine. Of course the noise doesn't bother him. He'll learn.
9
@Steve I don´t think Pete Wells is 33. Yes a bio site on the internet makes a glaring error - he graduated U of P in 1986 they write then in the facts box claim he was born in 1986. Youngest college student ever. https://www.famousbirthdays.com/people/pete-wells.html
Pete wells is not 33 years old. He graduated from U Penn in 1986, which puts him in his mid-50s.
@Steve Pete is in his mid-Fifties, according to The New Yorker. If he were 65, he might prefer less noise.
Restaurants discovered years ago that a loud restaurant means big bar bills. One gets thirsty when having to talk over the din, so orders another drink.
The young love the forced gaiety of this - perpetual New Years Eve. Older people prefer good food and good conversation. Unfortunately, this is not the demographic restaurants seek as they dine out far less frequently.
11
"Hearing," along with sight, smell, taste, and touch, are the basic senses. Good restaurants are aware of all five. Loud music in a bar or bistro setting is to be expected nowadays. But for an upscale restaurant setting a beautiful table, paying close attention to the smell, plating and taste of their food then choosing to play loud foreground music is akin to over-salting the entree.
7
I ate dinner in a highly reviewed and much praised restaurant, in which the wait staff worried about hearing loss. The main cause was amplified music, which made it impossible to talk across a narrow table.
In this article, though, I resent simple ideas such as if the place is noisy we should not complain because we are just complaining about ourselves. How can we take seriously a writer who makes such a self-disqualifying remark? Should we accept crime because we are criminals? Should we not modify our own behavior in public in awareness of others? should we not criticize designers using materials that reflect rather than absorb noise?
I am afraid this article is just not good enough.
19
There's a balance to be struck in a restaurant between hushed, reverent silence and clatter so loud your ears ache when you leave. I don't want either. A crowded restaurant can be joyous and lively without deafening patrons. It's the extreme noise of bad acoustic design that North American restaurants, imagining themselves to be hip, should understand turns off most people, who do in fact, want to chat over their meals.
7
It's a design issue. In most restaurants there are very few sound absorbent surfaces, so sounds bounce around and can be very distracting. For older people like myself, it can make eating out quite unbearable. I am really thinking of getting hearing aids.
The solution is easy enough, the restaurant design needs to provide sound absorbent surfaces wherever they can. I was surprised and impressed to find sound absorbent panels underneath the table tops in a restaurant in New Orleans. Simple, easy and cost effective.
6
Restaurant noise is a perfect example of a negative feedback loop: a 6-top table bursts into laughter or mirthful surprise screaming . It disrupts your table's conversation flow, so your table speaks more loudly, which in turn causes other tables to raise their volume ,and then the staff feels that they must raise their own level in order to communicate with the bartender and the kitchen. Then, someone decides that the music can't be heard --so they turn up the music volume, and so on and so forth.
No power on earth can prevent a bunch of young women shrieking with delight over the sight of the engagement ring ,or a bunch of bros hooting and cheering for their long lost late-arriving buddy. Or the roar of singing "Happy Birthday". Or just the sheer energy level of people out on the town that creates a bustling, noisy environment.
Restaurants, especially in Manhattan and chic Brooklyn neighborhoods are entertainment experiences more than anything else. Go early when the old people eat, ask for the music volume be turned down as soon as you are seated.
If you must eat in a hip, now, restaurant at 10 p.m., filled with the ambitious, on the make, under -40 crowd, seating 150 diners, then you just gotta live with it--it is what it is.
3
Sound levels in restaurants are there by design. There was an article in the Times several years ago detailing how restaurant owners made a conscious effort to raise the decibel levels. Their thinking was that younger diners wanted a more club-like atmosphere. They also designed their music to be a certain tempo that encouraged faster eating, and therefore faster table turnover. A quick check shows that the Times has been writing about noise in restaurants since at least 1985.
My goal is to have a total experience of both food and relationship. I have this odd notion that I don't want to shout when talking about the food or anything else. I have cut back on the frequency of my dining out because the overall experience is often unpleasant owing to the noise. In fact, at some establishments, on opening the door, I have turned around and left because I didn't want to waste money on what was clearly going to be an unpleasant experience.
10
@Redwood My mom and her companion are in their 70s, and they know that eating out at 4 or 5 pm will be a very different experience then eating out at 9 or 10 pm. Perhaps the noise sensitive among us need to eat before the crowds arrive?
@Sue Should the employees who work at these restaurants only work at 4 or 5 pm to avoid the excessive noise that is damaging their ears?
1
The social aspect of dining out, which you analyze in depth, is indeed a critical component of the experience. I once dined in a restaurant where each table was in its own little private cocoon-like room; I might have well dined at home. But one component of this issue you give little attention to is the acoustic properties of the restaurant décor. Thoughtful interior designers will include a mixture of both hard and soft surfaces, helping to dampen the echo effect that results in diners escalating their voices in an upward spiral to be heard over the din. Restaurant décor is more than eye-candy to enhance the overall experience; it plays a very functional role that is heard as well as seen.
4
Dining out has become almost unbearable due to the level of the music. I usually ask for the music to be turned down so that I can hear the conversation at my table. If the restaurant accommodates my request I usually find I can hear the conversation and still hear the music. If I dine out with friends, that's what I want to do - not go to a concert. If I want to hear music then I select a venue meant for music not a restaurant. The only benefit of too-loud restaurants is that I've become a better cook so that I can eat at home and avoid them.
14
I was also a restaurant critic--luckily for my hearing ability and enjoyment, for a monthly magazine and not a weekly. Mr. Wells seems to be ignoring the simple fact of auditory build: As music becomes louder, people raise their voices, the restaurant becomes louder, and people raise their voices some more.
Also, it isn't entirely generational or age-related: I don't want to listen to Vivaldi or opera or Zoot Sims at top volume, either, even alone, where conversation isn't an issue. With music, as with all things, the key word is "moderation."
8
As a former restaurant GM in popular Atlanta restaurants, I can state with knowledge that the music level in restaurants is a business tactic designed to turn tables more quickly. About twenty five years ago, restaurant association publications began publishing studies that showed diners would eat and leave more quickly if the music was a bit louder. This gives restaurants a chance to seat the table more quickly, possibly getting in an extra turn. Like most things, the "trend" has been taken to the extreme, cranking music to a ridiculous volume in a room full of hard surfaces.
I'm very happy for you if you get in an extra turn, but I always chose to never dine in that restaurant again.
16
The chicken or the egg? I’m not speaking of a menu, but of your author claiming that “Restaurants are loud because we’re loud.” Sorry to disagree: loud music obliges you to speak loudly. Which is a shame, as I do think that the restaurant experience is to “concentrate on the food and the conversation without auditory distractions”.
9
Sentence of the year:
“Life in the 21st century means never having to hear the person who stepped on your foot say, ‘I’m sorry.’”
7
@Tawny you're assuming that said person said "sorry" at all.
There are several issues that are not noted, or only get passing note, in the article.
First, how about thinking of the staff of loud restaurants. In many restaurants, servers and others are subject to hours of loud noise. This has a significant potential impact on their hearing, both short term (called Temporary Threshold Shift - TTS) and long term (Permanent Threshold Shift - PTS). Perhaps Mr. Wells should spend a long evening in a "loud" restaurant and see what it feels like to have TTS for several hors afterwards.
Second, much of the problem with "loud" in restaurants in the design. Restaurants are complex environments architecturally, as pointed out in a recent article on restaurant noise in Acoustics Today (www.acousticstoday.org). Thus, the walls, floors, ceilings, and other features can greatly magnify sound levels, to the detriment of diners and staff. So it is not just the direct sound of plates clanging or diners talking, but it is the reverberation of these sounds off of hard surfaces that compound the noise problems substantially.
Third, speaking as someone over 50 who has normal hearing loss (and, Mr. Wells, this will get worse as you age), it gets harder and harder to hear companions at a table (and servers) as noise levels increase in restaurants. This means that the social interactions that most of us seek when dining out (perhaps not restaurant critics who are primarily focusing on food so they can write) columns) is lost.
13
At 70 years old I have quit going to restaurants because of the loud music. I don’t like the screaming conversations that are required for you to have with a dinner companion. I enjoy music with my dinners at home but I don’t turn it up, it’s a good background to our conversations. Repeat, a good background!!!
4
The parallel with smoking is apt. It is when you critic acquires lifelong tinnitus that he will change his tune.
7
The overwhelming majority of restaurants in this city do not take into account acoustic design because hiring someone and designing accordingly is expensive, so restaurants are generally nothing but hard surfaces and the like, resulting in a giant echo chamber and wind up being loud and cacophonous. People wind up in an arms race of loudness to make themselves heard and you generally have to shriek like a howler monkey set on fire to be able to be heard.
People are getting a wee bit sick of this.
10
Mr. Wells, you write well and have cleverly dismissed a matter of serious concern to many people, including myself.
26
Pete,
I challenge you to write this article every ten years. Let’s see what evolves.
12
The author hardly expresses the idea of noise as limiting the ability to converse. During this time of societal aversion to expressing verbal constructs with full sentences, meaningful exchange of complex ideas and subtle degrees of context, the experience of dining with friends has all-to-often become an event of clattering and empty noise. A party is fine, however a dinner with others should and could be a relaxing, enjoyable moment to share, not a shouting match to be heard over the din. The texting, twittering, and talk show inanity style of communication today, has lessened the need for a calm and relaxing time with other people over food, and the cacophony of noise all too typically experienced in restaurants today has made dining out an experience akin to the hallway of a a middle school between classes. The only remedy for this diner is to simply write off the establishments which, regardless of the quality of food, make the experience of dining akin to an arena sporting event. The excitement of a noisy vibrant and yes, LOUD ROOM, has a somewhat stimulating effect,and seems to suggest energy, success, glitz and fame, hence the appeal to many. To actually enhance that experience deliberately with hard surfaces, lack of acoustic consideration, and loud music seems an attempt to provide an illusion, rather than a zone of comfort, cuisine and conversation.
5
Eat at home in peace and quiet or go out if you want to see the world. I love quiet, elegant tea rooms, ladies who lunch restaurants and diners but there is a lot to be said for a restaurant/ cool bar with television sets, music and good food and a crowd of local regulars - but the place cannot be too loud. It has to be just right. These places, the real deal, are few and far between.
3
We live half the year in the foodie town of Charleston South Carolina and the other half in France. In France and most of the rest of Europe, you would be hard pressed to find a restaurant where the noise is annoying, even when it’s crowded. People are respectful and talk quietly, the music is low although usually there is none. There is a happy buzz, and dining is almost always a pleasant experience. In Charleston, the situation is exactly the opposite. We go to a restaurant and we must literally scream at each other just to be heard. Voices are overly loud, and there is always music, often too loud. The suggestion was made that one should choose a quiet restaurant, but that is not really possible, at least in Charleston. There are perhaps two where you can have a conversation, and they very expensive. I find whole US dining scene to be excessively noisy and annoying. I like a good buzz, but it has gotten ridiculous. All of our friends in Charleston complain constantly about this, and restaurants are missing a great deal of revenue but ignoring these complaints.
15
This is, I believe, and as with all generalizations, there are many exceptions -
a "generational" thing. Yes, Mr. Wells admits early on that he believes that his hearing is "intact" - presumably not that much "off" whatever its peak was.
The older one gets - and 50 is a plausible dividing line between those who "get it," "it" being the genuine unpleasantness of missing this and shouting that - the less plausible Mr. Wells' "denials" (of A PROBLEM HERE) ring!
I compare it with cellphone use. In spite of an article recently that says - in effect - even kids whose cellphone use gets "serious" (time & focus) by age 6 ... will mostly not turn into zombies, ... I believe that most of the over-50 crowd STILL thinks that there's something seriously wrong with 4 adults going out socially and all being "on their phones" for some portion of that time together.
It's akin to dogs "marking" their territory or the owners of yore, who failed to clean up after them. It doesn't look or feel right, and while we may not live to see a "reversal," any pining for "more civilized times and mores" is not misplaced!
Same with restaurants. It was "not always thus," and while I'll admit that some of what I'm describing is related to our feeling (heck, many bodies fairly scream the message!) "on the back nine" (I'm no fan of "downhill"), some of it is more like "Something's gotten lost as the amount of time reading at all ages has fallen off a cliff, with video & phone use seizing all that time!"
1
When I eat out with other people, I should be able to have a pleasant conversation without having to raise my voice. Why bother eating out with friends if you can’t talk to them? Music in restaurants should not be loud enough to overwhelm a conversation. Loud music in restaurants is out of place.
8
I do think this misses several important issues. The first and overriding issue is music. And while Mr. Wells very; briefly discusses the issue of smoking in restaurants, he hasn't used that as a way to suggest dealing with this. In this age of technology it is possible to wire the speakers so that they can be individually operated. This would mean that sections of restaurants could be without music. Then patrons could be asked whether they want to be in the music or non-music section. I am not a betting person, but am willing to bet that increasingly more and more will want to be in the non-music sections - or at the very least in an area where the music can be turned down.
In England they have a wonderful organization called Piped Down. It works to get music out of restaurants and stores. One of the reasons is that it is destroying our hearing and National Health pays for hearing aids. So over time will save money. And it is about money. Here we pay for hearing aids and insurance rarely covers the cost.
Yes discos and some bars should have music, but when I go to a restaurant with friends, I want to talk with them and hear them. And if alone, I am happy to read a book or look around.
What we should be doing is working to get music out of restaurants and stores. I wonder if one of the reasons retail store are losing out over Amazon and other online shopping has something to do with music in stores. That is 90% of the reason I don't go into them.
13
Used to love eating out. Now restaurants seem a scam to me. At home I have customized atmosphere, complete ingredient and cooking control, complete choice of companions and sound, much less cost, no need for reservations, no need to slog through winter sludge or summer heat and no guilt about underpaid servers or not leaving a tip if they have not earned it. Pete Wells, your prominence should make you more careful about endorsing restaurants’ bad practices.
7
I have three words for Pete Wells: acoustics acoustics acoustics. His column mentioned the possibility of technology fixes such as tiles and foam but he didn't seem to get behind them with any enthusiasm. His wholehearted defense of noise was, yes, hard to digest.
13
Of course, ambience, which includes music often, is a part of a restaurant experience. Thing is, music often just becomes part of the noise, a noise in which you have to shout to be heard and leave the restaurant hoarse. There is entirely too much loud music blared at plain silly volume because someone—chef, front of house—is being self-indulgent. Or, to be fashionable or cool, the restaurant’s decor includes some non-noise dampening tile work, which looks gorgeous but only serves to increase the volume. It’s hard to enjoy your food when you’re unable to hear your dining companions and if this makes me a stodgy bore, so be it. Yes, the overall ambience of a restaurant is important and, sure, some of us could conceivably cook complicated food at home, but don’t we go out to enjoy food and company? And not to have both of those ruined by screaming crowds, who are screaming to be heard over the music and bad acoustics?
3
As someone with severe tinnitus and pain-hyperacusis, I'm unable to go to restaurants as the loud noise levels are simply too high. The constant noise is damaging our hearing far more than we realize, it's time we take noise seriously and that includes loud restaurants. It's also not healthy for the people working in those environments.
6
I spent the last 30+ years having to entertain clients periodically at dinners in some of the loudest restaurants in NYC. I dreaded almost every single one of those experiences. Unfortunately the client usually got to choose where to go and more times than not they picked what they heard to be the latest "hot" place. Almost always the venues were so loud I could never hear anything anyone said at the table. After what seemed an eternity I'd go home with my ears ringing. I found a solution when I discovered there are a lot of very good hotels that have excellent restaurants where one could sit and converse in a beautiful atmosphere and enjoy terrific food and service. However I took a lot of snide comments from my peers when they heard I was encouraging clients to choose those places. I learned so many people equate a screaming atmosphere with quality dining.
8
“Having most of my hearing ability intact certainly helps my enjoyment” -Pete Wells
Keep going, Pete, and you’ll soon know what we’re talking about.
12
I noticed that a lot of the top comments complaining about the high level of noise are people in the New York area. Maybe it's because you're in New York, where people are loud? I used to live there and restaurants definitely are louder.
@Kattiekhiba - The point of the top comments is that New Yorkers would prefer not to be loud. We want the noise level lowered so we can speak normally.
5
Yep, living creatures living are noisy. The only noise in a restaurant I have no patience for is a TV. I guess that is wrong, overbearing music is also distasteful. Some people should just stay home, which is perfectly OK too. After all, why go out if all you want to do is be alone.
@Steve G I don't go out to be alone, but I don't go out to be with you either.
1
"Placid restaurants seem to be a minority taste, though." You could not be more wrong, Pete Wells! You are stating YOUR preference. And the restaurant industry is losing itself tons of money if they agree with you.
In my experience, the majority of people who want to be in a loud restaurant are young & either drunk or looking to get drunk(er). And the more they drink, the louder they get. Eventually they reach full "bro" woo-hoo! level, which is only desirable or tolerable to other young, drunk people.
I don't pay good money to be in the company of people like that. I pay for a restaurant where I can hear & be heard without raising my voice unduly, and where I'm not losing my mind & my hearing to a sound system that's been dialed up to DEFCON levels (by owners/employees who have very damaged hearing themselves).
My conclusion is that most restaurant owners don't actually have a clue how much potential income they're costing themselves with too-loud sound levels.
15
Might as well be eating at a ballpark if the noise of the crowd is what excites you.
11
The last favorable Pete Wells restaurant I went to had music so loud I asked the hostess to turn it down. She didn’t. Now I know why.
I feel like this trend started with sports bars, blasting big screens and squealing groups doing shots. It’s horrible!
9
We were a group ranging from late fifties to early eighties having dinner in one of LA’s hipsterish downtown restaurants. I overheard the maitre d instructing a waiter to “turn up the music—time to send the oldsters on their way.” We haven’t been back.
11
You can't go into a bookstore, an airport, you can't pump gas or take a meal in Manhattan without amplified music filling up your brain space. What is it that Americans are so terrified of hearing within should every waking moment not be stuffed with music & TV's blaring? What a huge relief it is to travel to other cities, hear one's own footsteps inside Gatwick, go to a bookstore in Paris, sit for a quiet meal in Iceland away from this thunderous noise of third-rate muzak. Harrumph.
7
Pete Wells is 33. His hearing is intact. His credibility with me on the issue of dining in a noisy restaurant is zero.
26
Nah.
Lively conversation and music that doesn't drown it out...that's why I host dinner parties and find many restaurants unpleasant. I offer the former (well, my guests do) and they do not.
1
I am the physician who is a noise activist, quoted by Mr. Wells in his fourth paragraph. "Noise is 'the New Secondhand Smoke'" is the title of my open access article in the Fall 2019 issue of Acoustics Today. Noise is unwanted and/or harmful sound. Greg Scott at SoundPrint has published data showing that restaurant noise levels in New York City are loud enough to cause auditory damage. In addition, excessive restaurant noise is a disability rights issue for those with hearing loss, tinnitus, hyperacusis, and problems like PTSD and noise sensitivity. Restaurant noise is a particular problem for older people, because half of those over 65 have hearing loss.
The quieter restaurants in Europe prove that loud noise is not a necessary accompaniment to dining. An article in the Summer 2019 issue of Acoustics Today discusses the challenges of designing a restaurant soundscape that provides a lively enough auditory environment which assures auditory privacy from patrons at nearby tables, but still allows one to converse with one's dining partner. Yes, it is a challenge, but it can be done.
No, restaurant noise isn't yet a crime, but I hope legislation is passed soon to make it one. And it looks like 95% of those posting comments on Mr. Wells column agree with me, and not with him.
34
For a long time now, I can't think of a decent restaurant I've been to where I haven't asked the server or the manager to lower the decibel level of the blaring and terrible music being played in the foreground not the background. Rarely is my request granted and even then with thinly veiled disdain. Ditto for most of the selections I've heard in elevators, airports, dentist offices and virtually every place where more than two people congregate. Quietude is not only good for the mind, it also enhances the satisfaction of a good meal.
4
I recently discovered the East Village bar Burp Castle, where the house rule is that conversation needs to be kept to a whisper and the bartender will actually shush people. It's my new favorite place. Noise enthusiasts are free to go down the street to McSorley's.
11
Americans are loud, offensively so most of the time.Add trendy music and you have the NYC dining experience . One can react accordingly, embrace it or reject it. I know what I do.
7
Adults want to go out, have a swell meal with someone and actually have a conversation without straining. Hard to do when the next table is inches away. In my opinion, many restaurants don't use adequate noise control ceiling tiles and the like. Sometimes they'll turn down the really loud music if you politely ask them, but the distraction of a "loud talker" is really annoying. Just this weekend, we had lunch at a historic spot that was converted to a restaurant. One guy in the room was quite verbose despite being with three companions who appeared uninterested in his professed fitness routine. Annoying to say the least. Not a ceiling tile in site- just high ceilings, wood, stone and metal. And why we need multiple televised sports in anything other than a sports bar, is beyond me.
10
Get back to us when your hearing acuity and ability to discern what others are saying is in decline. Then let us know how you feel about noisy restaurants.
15
This article is nonsense. There is a middle ground between deafening noise and so quiet that the silence is awkward. Music can be modulated to go with the crowd at hand. Design materials don't have to reflect noise, as many of them do in some newer restaurants. Like most commenters below, my dining experience is hindered if everyone has to shout to be heard (adding to the already intolerable din).
18
Sorry Pete, your whole piece sounds like a rationalization. If I need to shout to be heard or I cant understand my companions comments and I cant identify the music...then the establishment is poorly designed and I wont return.
I dont go out to eat to feel connected to a bunch of strangers "purring". I want to focus on the food and the friends I brought with me. Oh, and I want to understand exactly what the wait staff is telling me.
Noise? The less the better. Pretty basic.
If I wanted a "vibe" or throbbing experience, Ill go to a club.
21
Two words: acoustic engineering.
9
Mr Pete Wells is out of it. If I mistakenly walk into a restaurant filled with noise, I react as if I had walked into a restaurant filled with smoke. Noise and smoke are intolerable. Turn heel and walk away.
16
If there were a Me Too movement rising from the hearing-challenged community, then Pete Wells might be its Harvey Weinstein. He appears to be focused only on himself and his own pleasure, blissfully unconcerned with the toll that background noise takes on so many people. Yes, many of us are of a certain age when hearing becomes difficult. The intentional design of restaurants to amplify ambient sounds is shameful. Should Pete Wells eventually make it to that age, may he regret this column.
21
You say it yourself right in the article: "We go to look around, maybe to be noticed, usually to talk to the people we came with."
Yes we like to talk to the people we came with. The problem is that most restaurants are so noisy you cannot do this without screaming back and forth, making the experience most unpleasant.
Your theory/argument/article makes no sense.
12
Excellent! A silent restaurant is so off putting.
1
The alternatives are not either cacophony or utter silence. Please.
1
Part of a satisfying meal is the conversation. Uncontrolled noise makes it impossible to carry on conversation. Ergo: No satisfaction. Maybe the solution to accommodate everyone is to have auditory zones.
7
A small bistro in my neighborhood offers a scrumptious menu but, alas, the setting is comprised of only hard surfaces. Save for the cloth napkins, there’s nothing to absorb the sounds. The last time I was in it was so noisy that my dinner companions and I, seated at a table for four, had to text each other in order to carry on a conversation. Ridiculous. In addition to the big bill, I left with an even bigger headache. That’s it for me in that place. Can you imagine what it must be like to work in a place that loud? Restaurateurs are eventually going to catch on and lower the noise level if they have any regard at all for their customers, especially their better paying customers, and their staffs. The last time I was in a place that loud I was in college, the beers were a buck a pitcher, all the TVs were tuned to different football games and instead of napkins you used your shirt tail to wipe your greasy hands.
8
Folks, this isn't rocket science. Try this simple step. Walk into any restaurant. If it's too loud just walk back out UNLESS there are armed guards demanding you stay, eat a big meal and listen to all the noise. Luckily I have yet to go to an armed guard demanding I listen to noise restaurant. The door swings both ways folks.
5
Well that was insightful, for me. I just figured out why I hate to eat in restaurants. It's uncomfortable.
3
Oh No Pete! Why would you think loud noise adds anything to a good meal? I’m your biggest fan for sure but this time I’m starving for some rational thinking. My hearing stinks, I wear $7000 hearing aids and there is no technology that can handle pulsating, trivial music that many restaurants dish out. If I go to a bar I expect noise but a restaurant that I go to with my wife, friends or family to enjoy the food and atmosphere will not get my business a second time. We would all love you to publish your list of favorite quiet restaurants - please. I’ll give you a pass this time but hoping you help us folks out with some great food sans volume.
7
I've just returned from a trip to Paris, and the difference between sound levels in restaurants there compared to here is startling. The issue isn't the volume of people talking, it's the volume of the music. In every restaurant we went to, and there were around 15 of them, if there was any music playing it was barely noticeable. The places were full, the conversations around us were lively, occasionally punctuated by outbursts of uproarious laughter, and yet I never had to raise my voice or struggle to hear either the waiter or my dinner companion.
People have become inured to loud pounding music in public places. To me it feels like being aurally smothered. I can't stand it. Perhaps because I am a musician by profession, I can't NOT listen to music, and I find it terribly distracting. Music is supposed to be consciously listened to, not ignored as just background noise... and yet we do. Imagine if at every table in a restaurant there was an actor reciting Shakespeare as the diners tried to have a conversation. That's what it feels like to me.
As in many cultural things, the French are better at this than we are. Even in the humblest of bistros, the food is carefully prepared, the staff professional, and atmosphere convivial and conducive to civilized conversation. We could learn a thing or two.
17
Forget about the noise, for a moment. What’s truly offensive when dining out is coming home, smelling like a fryer. There are few things worse than showering and washing one’s hair, styling it, putting on good clothes, and then ending the evening smelling bad.
It isn’t only the open, grill-like places that are the culprits; it’s rather shocking how many restaurants offend. I - and others I know - have come to avoid smelly establishments. I’d like to see a measure of smell in a restaurant review.
2
If restaurant is too loud, I leave. I tell the management why and I don’t return. That’s all I can do,
11
Fun? It is no fun to be deafened by the cacophony. Make it stop!
11
I live in Andalusia, where the quality of bars, Chiringuitos, pubs, restaurants and other places serving drinks, tapas and raciones can be indicated by the noise level! Maybe a place or two has big screen TV’s showing that night’s game in the background, but the buzz, the cacophony, the rumble of noise as people yell back and forth, argue, joke and carry on simultaneous conversations is a real local measure of a bar’s quality. I live is a relatively small town that has dozens of competitive bars serving a beer, wine or agua con gas served with a tasty tapa for less than $3. An evening of a few beers and tapas is inexpensive. On a busy night various streets are packed with noisy places where people are joining friends to enjoy drinks and tapas. Time and time again, the barometer of which places have the fastest, friendliest service, the coldest beer, the tastiest house wine and the freshest seafood tapas is quite simply, which are the noisiest? Clearly the most popular are the noisiest; and the most popular are inevitably the best in the measures of quality. The quietist struggle to stay in business, while people squeeze in to join the party at the noisiest!
2
I am in the camp finding most restaurants in NY (and London, where I spend a lot of time) way too loud. And what befuddles me in both places is that the designers of the spaces give absolutely no thought to basic acoustics. I'm not talking about concert hall sound; just some basic dampening and treatment of corners and the like. Aside from the fact that it damages the hearing, it's hard to hold a conversation in most places. Moreover, I think we "put up" with all this noise--on the street and in the subway--in large part precisely because we are not yet activist about noise pollution. I can't say that I am activist about it, but slowly some people are drawing our attention to noise levels. A restaurant critique could be one such person, if only in a "noncommittal" mention of sound levels.
9
If the sound that is part of a restaurant's ambience regularly rises to the level of noise - an individual judgment to be sure and an inevitable occurrence in the quietest of eating places - why bother?
5
It’s a great read.
For me a good dinner out involves not only great tasting food but also: mostly inventive dishes, some surprising flavors, a predominance of locally sourced fresh ingredients or at least from a reasonable distance; dishes with a mix of textures; room has a warm ambience that includes decor and soft lighting; unobtrusive service, knowledgeable servers (who don’t ask “how is everything” every few minutes); a good playlist (I Shazam music that I like but don’t recognize for future reference); an exciting list of cocktails; a decent selection of wines; good value for my money, and more (nice new toilets; very clean well-maintained well equipped toilets that work perfectly, good for people watching; a room that’s well thought out, looks one of a kind unique....)
I have been to overly noisy restaurants but if all these elements are present then I may go there not for a romantic dinner or business lunch but as a respite from a week of stressful work or quiet solitude; or to celebrate anything with friends or family.
Dislikes: an unrealistically long menu; an unchanging menu and therefore a predictable experience; too many ingredients flown in from faraway; surprisingly large portions but high prices anyway; not much thought given to atmosphere/decor/lighting; a room that’s devoid of energy, music or other diners; inattentive servers; overly intrusive servers; prices not commensurate to my enjoyment level.
Mr. Wells defense of noise seems particularly tone deaf when you put it in the context of personal preferences. We look at reviews to see if the chef as a classic menu, makes bold choices, serves comfort food, or whatever. That’s the purview of the restaurant reviewer. We also look for the type of ambience we want, and would also expect a restaurant reviewer to cover that. We also consider service and making our choices, and the restaurant reviewer includes that. What’s the problem with indicating noise level, which is certainly just a part of ambience? Weather, like Mr. Wells, you like a loud environment, or as a substantial majority of commenters indicate, you want something quieter, what’s the problem with including that in the review and then letting people factor that into their decision.
11
I don't need a sitcom laugh track to tell me if the jokes are funny, and I most certainly do not need an elevated restaurant noise level to tell me that the food is good.
Restaurants use noise to turn over tables. If diners are enjoying a quiet meal they will linger longer. Increased noise drives people away and new customers can be served. So a large percentage of us are opting out entirely: if we hear your restaurant is noisy, you will never see us. If we learn by experience your restaurant is noisy, you will not see us a second time.
23
Mr Wells,
I agree wholeheartedly that there are different types of noise, that there are individual difference among people in how loud they want their environments to be, and differences for individuals across times and occasions in terms of how loud they want (or will tolerate) their environments to be.
Granting this, I suspect that the driving force behind many complaints about noisy restaurants is so-called background music. The louder the ambient volume in the room, the louder people need to speak. You can figure out the rest.
This may not be the case with many restaurants that you review. Nevertheless, dining is invariably a social experience, and if I have to shout to speak to my dining companions, and if I cannot hear them, the quality of my dining experience is diminished, if not destroyed.
The chatter of my fellow dining companions is music to my hears. Their shouting over the din of some wailing, shouting, or thumping is not.
With respect,
John Nezlek
8
Methinks Mr. Wells doth protest too much that overly loud music in restaurants is not a serious issue.
It most certainly is for me.
Loud music in restaurants and stores keeps me and millions of others OUT. I'm glad I can get take-out and do almost all my shopping online, in the quiet of my home. And I do not own a TV.
16
@GetReal
Good point about stores.
I’ve often given up on pondering purchases for DIY or craft projects while browsing, because of loud and distracting music.
5
I like to eat out and and I’ve eaten at some of the best restaurants in 142 countries and I have 258 Michelin stars under my belt...and I’m also 75 years old. I look upon every new dining experience as an adventure and I usually end up enjoying myself. As I have aged I have become more sensitive to noise so after enjoying the initial adventure I don’t choose to go back to the noisy ones and as the years pass I end up going back to fewer and fewer but I still relish the initial experience no matter the noise. So many of the commenters seem so uptight. Make the most of your initial visit and if it’s too loud for you, especially because of your age, then don’t go back...but don’t whine about. 
4
For those of you thinking that those complaining about the loud noise are of a certain age, I'm a Millennial. I recently ate lunch at a remodeled downtown bar catering to a yuppie crowd and asked if the music could be turned down. The music was so loud that people were having to yell over the music to hear each other. The table of 8 women in their 40's made their presence known just trying to catchup with each other. Meanwhile, another Millenial at the table next to us regaled everyone in a 10 foot radius about the girl fight she was in the previous night.
So naturally....my request to lower the music so people could talk a reasonable level was denied. And naturally I will not be dining there again.
26
Any kind of recorded music played really loudly ruins a dining experience. Even if you like it, inevitably, someone else doesn’t. This is from a professional musicians’ perspective.
11
There are many people with legitimate health concerns who simply cannot dine out due to the noise. When the decibel level is over 85 for a sustained period of time, it can lead to permanent hearing loss. This is an occupational hazard for staff and deeply unpleasant for diners. Frankly, I get a splitting headache from all the noise and have started using earplugs that I used to wear exclusively at concerts.
For many people, the din is not joy but agony.
12
I don't like music in restaurants. At all. I enjoy the moderate din of people talking and enjoying themselves, not having to talk up to heard over music.
8
If I'm having a meal alone at a restaurant, I don't mind if it's a bit noisy, but if I'm with friends and we're trying to have a conversation, we need to hear each other. Too many restaurants practically chase away their customers with blasting music that forces diners to shout at each other over the tables. Fortunately, they usually aren't the places that have the best Malbec and beef bourguignon.
8
1. If the music seems too loud (often it is) or seems inappropriate for the environment, the establishment is trying to tell you that you don't belong there. It is as if they are saying, "stay away, you-over-forty-crowd, because this place is for young people."
2. If you find a restaurant so loud that it sours the experience of being there, don't patron the restaurant.
3. Loud talking is confirmation of the increasingly narcissistic nature of our social interactions.
11
I assume Pete Wells and friends have no hearing loss, no brain issues (ASD, PTSD, ADHD, old age etc.) All of these things are incredibly common, and dining with most of my friends or family members means at least one or multiple of these issues will be at the table. It's not just that we have to shout across the table to each other, it's that dining out becomes very fraught and uncomfortable if you don't have a brain that copes well with live-music levels of noise and straining to hear conversation.
Brilliant for Pete and friends that they can enjoy themselves anyway! But most of the population is not as able-brained or eared, in my experience.
For those of us who truly need silence to eat, I promise you we will eat at home.
For the rest of us, small modifications to noise levels like acoustic foam, drapes, cushions can make a world of difference.
(And I know margins are tiny. Do you reckon restaurateurs would hate it if I brought my own acoustic foam to discreetly stick under the table for the duration of my meal? Maybe a tablecloth?)
9
The best restaurant I ever went to was Alinea in Chicago, variously called the best restaurant in the country and in the world. The many tasting courses were extraordinary, as was the service, and it was—quiet! Our group of four felt almost isolated....in a good way. Pampered by attentive staff, savoring unique dishes, talking without raising our voices. Aaaahhhhh.....
11
Gosh, what a bunch of fuddy-duddies these commenters are! This article made me smile, and think the atmosphere of dining out should feel like a celebration, and joyful noise is part of that. While very few people, myself included, want to listen to metal at a fever pitch in a restaurant, laughing and carousing on top of a moderate soundtrack makes for a memorable night. As a longtime New Yorker and current Angeleno, meeting friends for dinner should be social and boisterous, but when we start complaining that the espresso machine is too loud, and Pete Wells can’t be trusted as a food critic because he defends noise in restaurants, we should also remember that dining out is not only a choice, but a privilege. Great commentary, Pete!!
3
The fact that all the successful restaurants you've been to are loud is not an accident. I've made a random sampling of the loudest places over the last few years trying to figure it out. Its a common belief among restaurant managers and staff that a high decibel level is a requirement for a successful restaurant.
New restaurants are the most frequent offenders as they are designed that way. They want to be a 'happening' place. I'm not talking about the 9PM when the younger crowd is packing the place but even the 6PM pre-theater crowd.
I've left a half dozen restaurants off my do-over list due to this.
13
The design of most restaurants does a lot to amplify the noise level. Lots of hard surfaces, including floors across which the unpadded feet of wooden or metal chairs scrape with an excruciating shriek. Open-plan kitchens. Rattling coffee bean grinders that grind on one's nerves, and beepers of various kinds that won't stop because the staff are too busy to shut them off. (I'm looking at you, Starbucks.)
Ceilings with exposed pipes because that "industrial" look is considered fashionable. No carpets and few to no curtains. No acoustical tiles anywhere in the room. And that's not even considering the ubiquity of unpleasant musical sound tracks and flickering TV screens on every wall. Small wonder the customers get loud because they feel like they have to shout to make themselves heard out of the noise made and amplified just by the fixtures of the place.
13
"I received an email from a physician who calls himself a noise activist, comparing restaurant noise to secondhand smoke. It took legislation to get cigarettes out of restaurants, he wrote, and if enough people are made aware of the risks of hearing loss posed by high volumes, similar laws could be passed “mandating quieter restaurants.”"
Man, people are a trip.
4
The ideal dining experience combines food, service, and social interaction. No one expects the silence of the tomb, but when music ads to conversation, it is impossible to talk at a reasonable volume. My wife and I have excellent hearing, but our voices have been shredded by this lethal combination. Since most of the music tends to be pure trash, we lose our appetite. We agree with responders who find the European dining scene far more civilized.
20
How nice to know that I will never need to read one of your reviews ever again. If you like a place, I am almost guaranteed that I will hate it, given that I am hard of hearing on my very best day, almost completely deaf on my worst and consider a meal out to be a special occasion. I resent when I am spending what feels like a large sum of money ( to my bank account that is) for an experience that leaves me with a headache and no appreciation for having had a nice conversation with friends or family. I'll look for reviewers that take into account those of us who prefer quieter experiences so that we can appreciate the food, the company and the event of a night out. In the meantime, I'm an excellent cook, I'll stay home.
22
Loud restaurants beget a feed-forward loop in which patrons have to shout to have an ordinary conversation with their dinner companions. Which raises the ambient sound further, which requires louder shouting etc. Some of us need our hearing, our voices, or both to do our jobs. Both are under attack in this environment.
I don't find any restaurant amusing, charming, or convivial above a certain level of decibels. Loud, sustained noise induces short term pain and long term damage. Many of ny friends can't enjoy dining out at all anymore because of hearing damage - often the first thing to go is the ability to filter out extraneous noise in a crowded room.
It is true that these things can vary a lot from night to night. So what we need is maximum and minimum noise level measurements, right up there with the price of dinner.
22
No, not everything can be controlled. Generally my wife and I are both of the opinion that restaurants are too noisy, and that music is generally too loud, necessitating raised voices to make oneself heard. My wife uses hearing aids, so the phenomenon that Mr. Wells describes about both signal and noise being amplified is well known.
Once on an anniversary trip to Lake Tahoe, we dined (or attempted to) in a well-reviewed restaurant where in the center of the room was one long table occupied by about 30 women, who each had to speak at sufficient volume for all the other 29 women to hear. No doubt this phenomenon was plentifully lubricated with alcoholic beverages. (Many bottles were visible on the tables.) But the din was too much to bear — indeed, it was actually painful, on a par with an NBA arena — so we left this restaurant for a quieter one; we agreed we had never been in one as loud. On our way out, the maitre d’ apologized for the racket.
I have no doubt that somewhere there is an injury law firm specializing in workers comp cases involving restaurant noise.
21
"For the first time in history, we can tune most of our sonic environments to our liking, whether we’re at home or not."
And in this case, my 'tuning' is to stop going into noisy restaurants. My chosen 'sonic environment' is my home. My friends and I prefer to spend time with good food, lively conversation and soft sounds - shouting, and straining to hear is exhausting.
24
The noise level is out of control and ruins a nice dining experience in too many restaurants. If you are paying $100 a head for a decent meal with drinks, you shouldn’t have to shout to be heard! We have begun to boycott and give not so nice reviews. This is a heating hazard as much as too loud concerts or headphones. Please! Turn it down!
24
The biggest reason for loud is to get people out and turn over the tables. I worked in a few and that's exactly what we did. If there was a line up at the door we'd crank it.
Honest restaurateurs will say that is the only reason. Sure, a few customers will dig it and stay, pretending to be hipsterish, but the majority will escape. Rule of thumb was to turn all the table hopefully 3 times a night - so average 2.5, which is really, really hard to do. Cranking the volume was a tool.
17
Go any restaurant in Italy, Spain , France.....etc. and you will see groups of 4-9 dining together and talking without yelling! Everyone is listening and everyone is enjoying the conversation and the moment.
22
I have to agree with most here: restaurants have become too loud. But, I also worry that we may actually have more responsibility for the problem than we know. I could easily say that I don’t speak loudly while dining out, but if the noise level goes up during the course of the meal, then I guess I speak louder to compensate.
My strategy to dealing with this has been to dine earlier for both lunch and dinner in an attempt to be at the restaurant when there is almost no one there. If I am stuck with dining at a more crowded time, I’ll ask for a table in a quieter more secluded area, even a separate room, if they have one and I’m familiar with the establishment. If I’m a regular, the restaurant will try to accommodate me.
6
You seem to write from the perspective of someone who has no problem hearing and likes loud noise levels in your restaurants. Is it because with loud noise levels the wait staff cannot overhear you making notes about the dishes for your review? My wife and I go to a restaurant for the food and to enjoy the company of the other couple with us. A loud restaurant detracts from both. Why do restaurant designers think that hard surfaces are good? Why not create a space which is beautiful and not overpowering?
14
Up where I live, the majority of people I know say the same thing: restaurants are way too loud. While I don’t expect a restaurant critic to solve that problem, I think the restaurants themselves could do a little bit and make some effort to deal with this. There are some simple ways to do it.
– Avoid a multiplicity of hard acoustic services. There are many ways to approach this problem: padding, carpet, acoustic panels.
– Stop cramming so many tables so close to each other that you can hear your neighbors chewing their food!
- Turn down or OFF the background music. Most of it is too loud and diners aren’t listening. Do we really need to listen to yet another series of songs that we’ve already heard twice today?
- Consider having some section in your Place that does offer slightly lower volumes. It’s rare to see this in any restaurant.
16
Diners don't make restaurants noisy; bad design does. There is no reason that voices (and the loud DJ sound track) have to rattle and bounce after every surface in the room. Design better from the beginning, and diners will thank you by coming more often, spending more time and money in your restaurant and building your business!
15
My friends and I stay away from loud restaurants! We want to talk and hear each other! We don't want to compete with 50 other people who are shouting while their babies are crying. Why make this a noise competition?
17
I tried out a new steakhouse in town. The service was excellent, the food was better than most. I told the server how much I enjoyed both, but told her I would not be back. The noise level was overwhelming. I was quite a distance from the bar, but I could hear the bartender's every word as he had to shout to be heard by people sitting right in front of him. The background noise really was a turnoff.
22
Manhattan restaurants become less appealing every day, thanks to (a) noise levels, (b) ever-rising prices, and (c) too-close tables that make you feel like you're knocking elbows in a subway car. That is, if the restaurant hasn't already disappeared due to (b). More and more of my leisure-time dollars are spent here at home, 8 miles west of the GWB. From my house I can walk to five very good eateries: Thai, Italian, pure Turkish, pub/burger, "Mediterranean" (a mix of Greek and Turkish). Within a 15-minute drive or Uber ride there are literally another dozen gems. All BYO, all perfectly good, all of the type you can barely find East of the Hudson these days. Eat your heart out and put in your earplugs, Manhattanites!
12
As a hearing impaired person, I find that noisy restaurants are very bad for one’s ears. A decibel level of 90 or higher actually causes hearing loss. And with all the noise in the world it’s not a good idea to add to hearing loss. It’s not a pleasant time when one has to raise their voice in order to carry on a conversation in a restaurant
18
I've been feeling more and more that Wells likes an argument as much as good food, even if sometimes I like his POV, but I'm now convinced that I should avoid his reviews. Everything in moderation, you know? Anything, including a good dish, can become excessive. So can noise.
18
The loudest restaurant ever was America near Union Square back in the 80's. A huge cavernous loft like space jammed with tables full of guests. One had to shout to converse. And yet, it was a favorite of my friends and I.
1
Was it “America?”
1
Want quiet, affordable, delicious with good, helpful service? Try La Morada at Willis Avenue and 140th Street in the South Bronx. Noted by NY Times, The New Yorker, countless impressive reviews for their authentic Oaxacan recipes. Families are welcome and it is still quiet and comfortable, diners are not sitting on top of each other either!
5
I'm with the less-is-more crowd when it comes to restaurant "noise". Much of my experience is that when it's too loud, the setting isn't well thought out - tile floors, bare walls, echoing everywhere. When a really, really crowded restaurant is noisy, that's to be expected, but when a busy but not overcrowded place barrages the customer with sounds caroming from wall to ceiling, its a design flaw.
I'd also like to drop my two cents about background music, to which I have no objection as long as it's chosen well. When a restaurant resorts to blah pop radio playlists, they deserve to be dinged in their reviews. Nothing adds a layer of blandness to nice meal like the ever-present Taylor Swift. Sigh... Music that reflects the cuisine and the culture from which it derives is always preferred. Its such a pleasure to try new tastes in food, why can't my ears enjoy the same?
11
Pete Wells is correct: his hearing is intact and if it weren’t, he might be having a different experience. My hearing is NOT fully intact and noisy restaurants—acoustics that magnify noise, tables crammed closely together, and unnecessarily loud music—are the norm, sadly. I’m afraid he is showing his insensitivity to those of us with disabilities, whether moderate or, as in the case of my wife’s hearing, more severe. When I read a restaurant review, I want to understand exactly what the noise level is so that I can make up my own mind whether the excellence of the food is worth an evening without conversation.
31
I think decorators and out currant tastes are the problem. Our taste today favors less fabric ect , (meaning -window ,wall and floor coverings that absorbs noise) .
3
My friend and I have a favorite restaurant in SF. The other day, we realized that we'd spent almost an hour longer having dinner there than usual. It was busy, but the kitchen wasn't slow: most of all that extra time was spent repeating ourselves at top volume. When managers understand how many more people they could serve in an evening by allowing them to talk normally instead of shouting "what, what?" they may decide to do something about it.
17
In addition to music, there are high ceilings, hard walls and floors, often not even a table cloth to muffle. If i walk into a restaurant with loud music, I walk out immediately. They are not getting my money. Instead, I get my friends to converse with minus the cacophony.
17
Cara Buckley, of this very paper, wrote a July 2012 story about how noise in restaurants, stores, and gyms reaches levels that threaten worker's hearing. It quotes an audiologist, a doctor, and an engineer, who all agree that these environments are dangerously loud.
Here's what the piece says about the restaurant where a waitress—who is getting migraines and taking seizure medication—is subjected to noise that violates workplace safety rules:
"The noise averaged 96 decibels over the course of an hour, as loud as a power mower, and a level to which, by government standards, workers should not be exposed for more than three and a half hours without protection for their hearing."
This isn't just a matter of taste. It's a medical and labor issue. These restaurants are breaking the law, and they're putting their employees' health at risk.
49
My wife and I often get our food "to go" because we cannot bear the excessive noise in loud restaurants. It is the reason we avoid sports bars. There is nothing more enjoyable than a quiet, calm environment in which to savor our food. My favorite restaurant is one that operates from an old Victorian house with a number of small dining rooms. Each of the rooms has only 4 or 5 tables. The ambiance is peaceful and uncrowded. It's like having a nice, calm dinner at home without having to prepare the food and clean up afterwards. I enjoy the quiet conversation of my dinner mates. Turn down the noise, please.
21
I’m 75 and I pick restaurants based on food but also acoustics. If I can’t hear anyone at the table because of loud music, I go elsewhere. So do most of my friends.
16
Just wait Sonny Bub, until your hearing has begun to run up some hours on the clock. You aren’t going to enjoy the din then. Excessive noise in a restaurant is a deal breaker for me. Not only is it unpleasant, as many have pointed out here; it’s detrimental to health and well-being.
Let’s leave the conversations screamed into ears against a backdrop of highly amplified music for the kids and night clubs, where loudness is a part of the feast, and enjoy food and conversation in a more inclusive, healthful and convivial ambiance.
19
This was overlooked: when a restaurant is loud, people eat faster. Turnover is quicker. What restaurant owner wouldn't *want* that?
7
Re: Pete Wells - Is Restaurant Noise A Crime? (Jan. 21,2020)
This column revisits a topic that has been debated over and over for years. Most of the time the issue seems to be restaurant noise as a nuisance to customers. I read through Mr. Wells’s article hoping to find at least a mention of the noise issue with respect to the staff. The wait staff and others are subjected to the din of these “vibrant” establishments for their entire work shifts multiple days per week, customers can chose when and where to dine. There are federal regulations which govern occupational exposure to noise. As Mr. Wells points out, the noise level fluctuates but the rules are based on a time-weighted average measured over the entire work shift, typically 8-hours. Also, the type of permanent hearing loss that may result from excessive noise is not generally correctable by use of a hearing aid. As many of New York’s restaurant workers are aspiring actors and musicians, it is ironic that their restaurant jobs may be affecting their abilities to hear the spoken word or musical sounds.
(I am a Certified Industrial Hygienist with 40 years experience in occupational noise control and hearing conservation programs).
36
We went to a new hot restaurant where the noise level was intrusive because it prevented intelligible conversation. I complained to the maitre’d and his retort was, “the chef likes it that way.” I could only presume that they wanted to turn over tables with this strategy. Within less than a year the place closed.
22
We don't go to noisy restaurants. They cause my husband pain in his ears. We're in Portland, Oregon, where we have some nice restaurants, but we don't go to them because of the noise. It's a bottom-line issue.
11
The sound, I would not call it noise, from people communing with each other over a meal or cocktail is emblematic of a free society. As such it should be celebrated. Noise on the other hand from televisions and music played too loudly can be distracting when trying to carry on a conversation. As usual it is all about context, but I personally enjoy the background sound of good energetic discussion.
5
We once went to a chic new downtown restaurant run by an up-and-coming chef. The food and drink were excellent. The dining room was so crowded that it was chock-a-block with tables and customers, and the noise level was so high -- almost ear-splitting -- that we realized we couldn't even hear what people who were talking about at the next table, barely a foot from ours. The noise was so intense that it actually promoted privacy!
4
Wells is just plain wrong. Restaurants used to have a much lower ambient noise level, by appropriate acoustic design, soft wall coverings, etc. Somehow a quiet place to enjoy soft conversation and good food has gone out of vogue, more's the pity. The worst of them have televisions or Muzak playing an incessant din intruding on any conversation below a shout. Makes me want to stay home and cook for my companions.
16
I enjoy a noisy restaurant, if it's a crowded bar type environment. Imagine going to someplace with 7 or 8 friends, ordering draft beer and bar food, in a place that was dead quiet. It would be bizarre.
But in a place where I'm looking for a mellow, leisurely wind-down with a few friends, or a romantic dinner with my husband, noise is a killer. There's a restaurant a few blocks from our house (or was, it moved) where we used to go at least once a week. It was a small Italian place, great food. Only 8 or 9 tables, and a bar packed with the people without reservations waiting for a lucky chance to get one of those tables. The music was soft, and so quiet. No one, not even the servers, spoke above a whisper. So in that small, packed room, the loudest voice was Frank Sinatra's.
I miss that place.
15
I am an autistic adult who has multiple sensor processing issues including a sensitivity to noise. Know this about myself, and knowing about the wide range of sensory challenges people with autism face has made me realize the people (both autistic and neurotypical) process sensory information differently from each other. Our experiences of noise, touch, light, smell are just as diverse as any other aspect of humanity. And though it's hard to accommodate everyone all the time, we should try harder to consider they ways our environments can exclude some people from engaging in social activities. I can not go to most restaurants and bars during common social hours (after work or on the weekends) because the noise will cause me a lot of anxiety or even cause a meltdown. This makes it very challenging to maintain friendships, since sharing a meal or drink in a restaurant is one of the most common ways to spend time with friends. I know that my disability only effect a small percentage of the population, but I also know it's not just autistic people who struggle in these noise environments. Reasonable noise levels should be included in ADA regulations so those with hearing related disabilities are not prevented from enjoying the company of their friends in restaurants, bar, and other businesses.
22
every public space has gotten noisier, in addition to restaurants: movie theatres, sports venues, malls. cranking up the sound is like pumping oxygen into a casino: it stimulates behaviors beneficial to the owners of said venue. PS I'm typing this at a martial arts center that plays what I call 'thump-thump' music to jazz the students during certain parts of the class.
4
For anyone with a hearing impairment (or having to wear a hearing aid) restaurant noise is excruciating. Not only is it difficult to hear but often impossible to carry on and participate in conversations.
16
I'm (mostly) OK with the sound of other people's voices at a restaurant. We all get to talk to our dining companions. Live and let live.
It's the gratuitous music that drives me away. I like to listen to music, too, but not when it prevents me from hearing and being understood, especially when it seems that it's being played for the benefit of the kitchen and wait staff and not to enhance the atmosphere for the guests.
19
You totally neglected to consider the BIGGEST factor in creating today's noisy restaurants! They used to have sound absorbing materials on walls and ceilings....now they are using materials that BOUNCE and AMPLIFY the sounds. Just put back the noisy cancelling and reducing construction materials and people won't have to shout and everyone will have a much more pleasant experience!!
19
Pete Wells at one point asks why we go to restaurants. Well, his take on restaurant noise can't but help be influenced by the fact that he's a restaurant critic and is being paid to eat in restaurants. He doesn't go just to enjoy himself, though I don't doubt that he does enjoy himself. He also hasn't mentioned in the reviews I've seen whether he eats by himself or has companions.
So for many reasons he's hardly a typical diner. Whatever dinner table conversations he has are secondary to his task of formulating his review. So it's no wonder that noise doesn't bother him.
13
When I go with friends to a restaurant, I go for the food and the conversation. If I can't hear and be heard, that takes away a huge portion of my enjoyment. I simply won't go back to a restaurant like that.
20
Restaurant noise is largely the result of restaurant design. Larger restaurants are, of course, louder than smaller ones. If there is mostly tile and cement instead of carpets and curtains, that will amplify the noise. One large space instead of several divided spaces will be louder. People respond to more noise by talking louder. So there’s a feedback loop. Restaurant designers may not think of these things during the design process.
2
The designers know exactly the impacts. Those impacts are at the owners’ requests.
Dear Pete,
I took the liberty of switching out just a few words from your most salient paragraph on judging noise levels. I am curious what your thoughts are on this.
"To those who ask about the connection of the chef to food quality, I say it strikes me as false precision, because variables like the night of the week or number of tables can have a more major effect on the dining experience. "
6
San Francisco Chronicle restaurant reviews include a noise rating. The first, full review will have a description of the ambient noice level ("Conversation difficult," for example), and a representative visual for subsequent capsule reviews (3 little bomb icons). It's useful for the older diner, and for those of us in the hinterlands who don't subscribe to the NY bubble...
14
How lovely that your hearing is still intact. I have learned on Friday that, due to the time I spent in restaurants during my 30+ years working with them, mine is not. I am glad you enjoyed the noise.
Noise, they say, is the new second hand smoke, as almost anyone wishing to be employed in a restaurant is exposed to a harmful environment.
America´s restaurateurs were motivated to adapt their buildings to adapt to ADA. They can adapt to noise regulations. The motivation that worked before was money, i.e fines and permits
As with second hand smoke, employees if they wish to work in restaurants. If they worked in other environments with similar decibel levels, they would be required to wear hearing protection. Tinnitus is guaranteed. I can live with it, but knowing that I will never enjoy silence again makes me sad.
There are other restaurants with lower noise levels, you say. There are also other restaurants where people in wheel chairs cannot reach the restrooms. Or did we solve that problem?
I maintain that my right to dine in any restaurant that appeals to me and employees´rights to work in a location that does not threaten their health trumps your right to enjoy a trendy ambience. Call me selfish and truculent.
80db is the highest comfortable decibel level in a restaurant. 90db causes permanent hearing damage.
In case this all seems inconsequential, several new studies confirm a link, probably causal, between hearing loss and Alzheimer's.
Buon provecho.
28
I give the waitress extra tips for turning down the volume of the TV, and I thank her explicitly for this as I leave the restaurant.
9
You know why restaurants are noisy? It’s because their owners are cheap. Interior room finishes that are hard and therefore sound reflective are less costly than sound absorbing acoustical finishes. I wouldn’t mind the resulting noisiness so much if their savings translate into lower menu prices. But no such luck.
11
Thanks for a thoughtful and unexpected perspective. I came to a similar conclusion myself some time ago, although it took me a full year of living in Paris to realize it. There was something about the restaurants we frequented there that seemed cold or overly formal or unwelcoming. The servers were not rude. The food was typically good. But we felt exposed and unable to fully relax while dining. I could not put my finger on what gave me that feeling.
Before, I had been one of those noise complainers, indignant at the noise levels in American restaurants, so it took me a long time to figure out that lack of noise was the problem! The restaurants had none of the convivial chattering and background noise that made me happy and put me at ease (and would, incidentally, allow us to fall into conversations in English without drawing the attention of the other diners). Obviously, I do not want noise levels so high that I have trouble conversing at my table, but I now realize that I dislike the other extreme just as much.
4
I'm aware of at least two restaurants in the Boston area that are now closed - their food was excellent, their drinks were stellar, but their noise was truly burdensome. My party and I had to walk out after being seated in one of them when we realized we had to shout at each other to be heard. Prime culprit was not the amount of people in the place, but the hard surfaces and furniture and floors. Just wander into a restaurant that's been serving for many years and take a quick guess as to one of the reasons for its longevity.
16
Couldn't disagree more with the reviewer.
I like it to be as quiet as possible and no music, or very low and easy listening.
Why I skip many restaurants. A few turn down the music if you ask them. Many don't get my business anymore.
Common sense seems to be very uncommon in regard to this topic, at least among owners.
20
Whatever the reputations of their food, when I walk into a restaurant and am greeted with a wall of noise, I walk back out again. One of the great things about New York, though, there are so many restaurants, you can find ones that are quiet, some that play intriguing music you've never heard before, softly. A place like that opened about a block from us five or so years back. One night a few months ago, a young couple walked in, sized up the ambience, and walked out again. Good thing, too; it's a small place and they're doing well. It's nice we can get a table if we go at the right time.
14
1. What specific qualities make European restaurants better for enjoying conversation?
2. Could some startup put ambiance meters in every restaurant for a weather.com-like noise level reporting or a Waze app traffic reporting-like crowdsourced noise level?
3. What are dinners with Pete Wells like re socializing and conversations?
4. Going to a restaurant is like going to a movie theater instead of seeing the movie on a large screen at home. The patrons and staff interacting and conversing is part of the floor show experience of going out to eat. Larger than life experience.
5. I am often stressed by noisy venues. I like to relax and converse at mood. I love a one ring circus (European style or Big Apple), but hate the three ring circus (Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey).
6. I would like to know the noise level policy of a restaurant beforehand. Since that policy reflects the planned interior and business design of the restaurant, why not proclaim those intentions on the door? “Abandon ye of all hope of thought and conversation who enter these gates!”
9
You make some interesting points, but on the whole I think you are barking up the wrong tree.
Research shows we can concentrate on only one thing at a time, even though it may also be true that age makes it even harder to sort out what we want to hear from what we don't. We don't multi-task well.
Shouldn't restaurants respect that by doing whatever they can, within reason, to make it easy to carry on a conversation without shouting?
I also think you are wrong about music in restaurants. It ought to be banned. Music is too important not to be listened to, and it devalues it and us to have it on background. If it's worth hearing, it's worth concentrating on. (Trouble is, much or most of it these days, above all rock and roll, is NOT worth hearing.)
Besides which, it causes an "arms race" of noise levels.
8
Whenever I decide that a restaurant is too loud, I make a mental note never to eat there again. About half of all restaurants are eliminated this way. It may be relevant that I am 81 years old.
13
@Doug
A lot of people agree with you. However, the restaurant industry has been booming and growing for years. A variation on the famous Yogi Berra saying - "Nobody goes there anymore - it's too noisy, and too crowded".
8
@Doug Loud restaurants aren't something younger people "like." It's something they put up with because it's become so prevalent, and has been becoming so for long enough that the youngest diners know no other experience.
I was in my 20s when this trend really took off. That's also when I started complaining and/or leaving loud restaurants. Now I'm in my 40s, and I find fewer and fewer places to eat. Restaurants have learned two things:
1) People order more drinks in loud places, and alcohol is a much bigger profit point for restaurants than food, and...
2) People don't tend to linger in noisy restaurants, which allows them to turn your table over to a new group more quickly.
The result of this I'm expected to pay $400 for a dinner for two in a restaurant with all the comfort and ambiance of an Applebee's.
In my 40's, my list of acceptable restaurants has gotten pretty short. I hope this trend ends soon. I'm weary.
13
Pete Wells' argument boils down to 'noise doesn't bother me, so it shouldn't bother you,' that we are subjected to noise everywhere in urban life and so restaurants should not be an exception. This amounts to saying that you should be perfectly happy to pay to be tortured.
40
I would think in today's day and age, when we have developed some concern for the disabled, loud restaurants would be looked at as indifferent, or worse, to disabilities.
As a hearing impaired person (yes, I know that in its "infinite wisdom" NY state banned that term) I am at a total loss in a noisy restaurant, even though I have fairly competent hearing aids.
I often read how important social connections and interactions are to health. So not being able to socialize in noisy environments is actually impacting my well being.
12
@G.S. - Yes, it's no longer acceptable for a restaurateur to say, "what the heck, wheelchairs can't get into my restaurant but I wasn't trying to cater to them anyway". Turning down the noise level is no more difficult to accomplish than building a ramp.
3
This is cold, thin gruel indeed, Mr Wells. To share another's comment, you missed the boat on this one. And big time.
Note the multiple posts here praising dining in Paris and elsewhere outside NYC.
Table proximity, hard acoustically reflective surfaces and an amped-up sound system playing staff favourites are just three of a number of addressable culprits.
$10,000-worth of hearing aids allow me to function all day and every day -- but not in restaurants.
I've solved my problem, but not the restaurant industry's. I seldom go out to eat. When I do, it's at unpopular hours, early or late. And, weather permitting on an outside deck or patio.
33
I am unable to share restaurants I like if they are noisy with some family and friends because they are hard of hearing. And also when I really want to have a real conversation with someone and share a meal at the same time. Noisy restaurants by their very nature are exclusive in the the excluding sense of the word.
16
Much of the racket is related to a demographic. There are more young women in the city than previous decades. Marriage and dating are on the decline. That, aided by a generation that has been reared with no rules, no judgement and no criticism leave a society that can be intolerable. People speak as if they are wasted at at a sorority house. Long gone is etiquette regarding hushed tones in public or respect for the people dining next to you.
Complete generalization, my experiences and observation is that guys mostly don't go out together for dinner and drinks in big groups save but loud Wall Street guys in Steak houses. Guys also don't mind being alone or grabbing a quick bite and heading home by themselves. Women aren't wired this way. Most restaurants and bars are jammed with women, overwhelmingly so, and the decibels are too much to bear. I'm not a misogynist so no offense intended. Also a study recently suggested women like loud places as it makes them feel like they are a part of a scene, a place to be. Good for them. But for me, it's all become too unpleasant trying to get the waiter's attention with music blasting so loud I can't hear and a gang of 8 young women doing shots and screaming. Good luck everyone.
20
The second derivative of a loud restaurant (due to music, hard surfaces, etc.) is that one has to increase one's own speaking volume to converse. Thus it becomes not just a few loud people but everyone shouting at each other. As most people commenting here have noted, Mr. Wells is pretty far off base with this particular column.
33
Anyone who makes it to about 55 years* will have age-related hearing loss that makes it difficult or impossible to hear what his table mate is saying in a noisy restaurant. I never go back to one.
*This means you.
Restaurants owners note: we have money, and our legion is growing fast.
31
Looks like you are outvoted. Interesting points re human interaction and lack there of...but when you cannot hear what your companions are saying the joy is gone. I absolutely avoid if I’ve experienced issues and resent that the management hasn’t made efforts to improve.
18
This is clueless. All one has to do is take a quick trip to Paris, Berlin or Barcelona to see that there's an alternative to the noise level of NYC restaurants. And everyone's still having fun!
48
The reason the restaurant is so
noisy is due to hard walled surfaces, including walls, tables and floors. Everyone raises their voices to be heard and that increases the volume for all.
The majority of the enjoyment of the dining experience is the conversation. When you struggle to hear; you are required to exert more cognitive load to try and understand, making you more exhausted at the end of the evening. Blood pressure goes up too!
17
Conversations are one thing. The noise of people conversing at dinner is unavoidable, and can itself be a kind of "music" conveying the electricity present when people are engaged.
But when conversation must be waged over an ostinato of recorded music or a television, and raised to a level that leaves one slightly horse the next morning, that's something altogether different—it's unpleasant for everyone, and it's something restaurants can and should do something about: turn off what you think we want to listen to or watch, and let us make our own joyful noise.
19
I remember a comment about a rock music festival that "there were too many people, and it was too loud." Like complaining about sand at the beach.
Some restaurants are lively, and that's why they're popular. Others are more serene, and that's why they're popular. Oh yeah, and the food.
For some of us, anything is better than staying at home.
1
I'm 67. I also go to restaurants to have something interesting and delicious and to be with people that I am interested in . Loud noise ruins this experience. Often friends will say : " Let's ask them if it is possible to turn the music down a bit or to move us because we cannot hear one another ." When you ask you get a variety of responses. They turn it down for 3 minutes, then turn it up again. They say " Corporate mandates the playlist and the volume ." They look at you like you are really pushing the limits and may or may not seat you in a different spot where it may or may not be quieter. If you walk in and can tell it is too loud either settle in and tolerate it and then don't go back or leave then. Because adjustments are unlikely. It's too bad. Older people can be quite loyal customers and generous tippers.
23
Restaurants are loud because of too little attention paid to acoustic design. Period. It has nothing to do with the patrons. Go to Au Cheval in TriBeCa on a Saturday night. Packed house, music pumping. And you can hear every word your dining companions are saying. Because they hired pros to design the space.
19
I still think a majority of restaurants deliberately make their venues as noisy as possible so people will just scarf down their meals and leave with minimal chatter and free up tables faster.
I only see this in America. I didn't have this problem at all when I visited Istanbul. There were restaurants full of people hanging out and gassing and yet you could still easily hear whoever was sitting at your table with you because they 1) didn't play canned music at full blast and 2) had sound dampening equipment on the walls like drapes.
31
Oh please. When you have to yell to be heard and feel on edge after a usually expensive meal it is time for a reality check. Hip? Sheep following the herd.
52
It’s all a matter of taste.
1
Noise is the enemy---period.
11
I've lived in Europe for 19 years, and I love the fact that I can have a conversation without shouting at restaurants here, mainly because they don't play music in the background. Also, not fluently understanding the language makes it easier to ignore the (usually) idiotic things people talk about. On one trip to America, I was in a restaurant that was so noisy with music, shouting, clattering cutlery and blasting music that the waiters had to take a knee next to the patrons to speak into their ears!
23
The incognito restaurant critic is probably not the best judge of what makes a good dining-out atmosphere.
For one thing, blasting music and commotion are a shield of sorts, a distraction that helps him maintain anonymity.
Also, keep in mind -- the restaurant is his workplace -- he wants to be hyped up and energized to do his job. His needs are totally different from those of an ordinary restaurant patron.
If he were dining after 9 stultifying and stressful hours in an office, shop or factory, plus commute on both ends, and trying for a brief oasis of peace, he might be singing a different tune. So to speak.
22
Restaurants need to do two things if they want more of my business.
1) Install noise absorbing fixtures on their walls. A restaurant with bare walls is just an echo chamber where the ambient noise ricochets off the walls in every direction.
2)Turn the music WAY down or turn it off. Establishments playing loud music are playing the music for the employees, not the patrons.
23
I vote with my feet. There are restaurants I will not go to voluntarily because of the noise level. I avoid them just like the places with bad service, bad food or bad location.
As you get older the hearing problems are worse due to masking. Loud places are just preselecting for younger clientele. Tant pis.
29
An awful lot of words and armchair psychology to try to defend what is on its face an uncivilized arrangement. I'd give anything for the quieter, white-tablecloth, hidden-kitchen joints of yesterday. The cigarette smoke was better than the crashing, obnoxious din of today's trendy troughs. I accept the word of people who insist they like the roar, but not for us.
33
@Blair trendy troughs! Good one!
Americans are notoriously loud compared to residents of other countries. Canadians speak in hushed tones with each other, and when in public we can always tell an American by their volume. Maybe it’s living with 350 million other Americans or just that Americans believe that whatever they are babbling on about needs to be heard by absolutely everyone else.
19
Does Mr. Wells enjoy an expense account for his work as a restaurant critic? If so, I would happily accept a job like his! A tiny portion of his allowance would surely buy a lot of earplugs.
BON APPETITE!
8
Restaurants are using noise as a way to turn tables. How dare you linger during a meal!
Intolerable.
28
Americans ARE noisier than other people. And addicted to nonstop entertainment. Mr. Wells seems clueless.
19
This article completely misses the point. Current restaurant designs are replacing plush, absorbtive surfaces with hard, reflective ones. The result is increasing din. It's OK that the reviewer likes that noise (even though I don't), but he should make clear that this noise is the result of conscious decisions. It is not at all an inevitability.
16
Americans are louder than Europeans. (Even Italians.) That's why.
6
Noisy restaurants are stressful and obnoxious, all the more so since the noise seems to be deliberately baked into the acoustics of the room. Loud environments also detract from attention to food, and make attention to conversation impossible. I suppose if your clientele consists of boorish ADD internet surfers, then a noisy restaurant meets their requirements. But restaurant developers should know this; there are people like me who will not ever return to that kind of place.
22
... wherein the restaurant critic finally reveals that the purpose of food is to limit the conversation to one speaker at a time.
7
Gradually over the last 15 years I go to restaurants less and less--the noise level, the forced intimacy of tables inches away, combine to make dining out a test of your ability to hold back a scream and rush out into the night. The noise affects the taste of the food--usually mediocre and dependent on chile and spices to make it "interesting". Fortunately I like to cook and prefer to explore unusual flavor combinations and exotic ingredients and then to enjoy a leisurely dinner with friends who can speak in normal voices, friends who appreciate flavor nuance and conversational nuance. The noisy restaurant goes with the shoddy, scamming, braggart culture that is America.
22
This is a silly debate. Restaurateurs are in business to make money, and may manipulate the sound level of their establishments in any way they see fit, just as they design the physical space and menu in any way they see fit. Likewise, consumers may accept or reject what the restaurateur has to sell for any reason they see fit. Poor choices on the part of the restaurateur lead to reduced business. Clearly, most consumers prefer a loud and lively restaurant, so that’s what has proliferated.
Don’t like a loud restaurant? Don’t eat in one!
4
I agree that if you don’t care to eat in noisy restaurants one should avoid them. I simply ask that a reviewer alert me to the noise level so I can make an informed choice - and go elsewhere.
23
@Real Bartender If you read the comments, you'll notice the only people in favor of loud restaurants are bartenders. That says a lot.
If there were any quiet restaurants left, we'd all be going there. The restaurant industry found out that the louder an establishment is, the more drinks they sell. It's a choice made by the industry that is universally hated by the consumer. So we're left with a choice: Deal with unpleasant restaurants, or order pizza every night. Your argument is a bit like saying, "Don't like data insecurity? Stop using the internet!"
25
I prefer to have conversation with my dinner companions without shouting. Noisy restaurants are an anathema, and people, especially drunk people, shrieking in public places are ill-bred.
17
This is a very foolish article. Of course, we want pleasant background noise to accompany talking to the people we're with.
Too loud music or too loud conversation (because of poor acoustical design) means:
1. We can't even hear what the person next to us is saying.
2. Some of us suffer from actual physical pain.
3. Later that day, or the next day, our voice is strained and our throat hurts from yelling for several hours to be heard.
3. Long exposure to loud noise causes Permanent Hearing Loss. This is really serious.
Pete: Ask the staff at a noisy restaurant how they feel at the end of a shift.
I have walked out of many restaurants upon being hit with a wall of noise upon entering. All that's needed is better acoustics.
32
The issue, Pete ,is not whether one enjoys the noise or not. The problem is that the decibel level of the noise in many restaurants has the potential to damage hearing, especially for those who work in that atmosphere for eight hours or more a day. Go to your favorite noisy restaurant on a full-house evening, take a decibel meter with you, and you may find, as did the New York Times a few years back, that the noise level is consistently above 90 decibels, high enough, with repeated long exposure, to damage hearing. This is a health concern. not merely an issue of aesthetic preference.
26
I have grown to hate loud restaurants and I avoid them.
But then again I'm getting older and they don't want people like me.
Some day Mr. Wells will join the ranks of the undesirable too.
16
I don't, won't go to a noisy restaurant.
22
People who want their conversations to be muffled have nothing interesting to say.
Restaurant design encompasses all aspects of a customer's comfort. Having chairs that make sitting uncomfortable is a design failure. Having garish fluorescent light that makes the food ugly is a design failure. Acoustics is part of restaurant design, too. Having poor acoustics that makes a conversation inaudible is a design failure.
14
When one must shout to be understood, two things happen.
First, each speaker stops trying to express complex thoughts. Subtlety, nuance, irony, word play... all fall prey to the need to shout: YES! NO! I AGREE! The conversation degrades in proportion to the decibel level. A transcript would read like a conversation in a kindergarten.
And second, each partner must weigh whether to continue speaking if it requires shouting monosyllables. It is simply no fun anymore to converse. So we shut up, eat, and hurriedly exit.
15
No, no, no. You have it backwards. People shout in restaurants BECAUSE they must, if they want to be heard above the hot playlist turned up to 11. In LA it isn’t “a few” places that crank it up, it’s most, so you will, like it or not, be eating to the pounding beat or keening pop balladeer. These are often restaurants with bars, cocktails fueling the mandate to unwind, loosen up, with even a tv in the background to provide a comforting focus for those drinking alone. It all seems to eclipse the dining part. It’s coarse, headache inducing, tiresome, and disappointing.
8
The fundamental problem with noise in American restaurants is: Americans are wildly, outlandishly, and disrespectfully noisy. Travel anywhere in the World, and the Americans are the noisiest bunch around, regardless of the setting and the appropriateness--and it is almost always inappropriate. It seems respect for others is the bottom line here in resolving issues regarding restaurant noise--and, importantly-- just about everything else denigrating life in our challenging World.
11