Missing in Action Diners
Can you enjoy food if you can’t hear it? Yes, it’s the noise issue again- thirty years on. That’s how long noise has been an issue with diners. and it’s hotting up again as bloggers are hitting their own high decibel levels on the subject.
I empathize. Last month I took a visitor from London to Origin and we might as well have gone to a rock concert. We couldn’t even share compliments on the food. I tried slipping the waiter a twenty to reduce the ear-blasting 85 decibel music. He charmingly refused the tip but said he would turn down the sound. If he did we couldn’t hear it.
I don’t get it. Restaurants, particularly high end places, are hurting in the recession, adding Mac’n’Cheese to their menus in hopes of attracting a broader swath of diners – and turning up the volume. But isn’t this an Underpants Gnome move, adopted (from South Park) by financial analysts to describe a goal without a strategy.
Noise is given astonishing credit as a restaurant-maker. Gotta be noisy for the “Twixters” – cash flush under- thirties who still live at home. They mustn’t be intimidated. Top Kaplan of Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining Group told the WSJ in March that “familiar rock music relaxes people. They get nervous in a higher end restaurant but they know they can relate to familiar tunes.”
Is a quiet restaurant a sign that the terrorists are winning?
So wonders George Prochnik , author of In Pursuit of Silence, after being told by a noisemeister that 9/11 was the moment “when the trend toward raucous, informal, let-it-all hang out urban hoedown aesthetics took off. They don’t want to have these insular kinds of experiences of coffin-like, very tailored dressy restaurants. People want to be in the flow of life.”
Loud Music sells drinks!
In 2008, French researchers found that when music was played at 72 decibels, men had a drink every 14.51 minutes. At 88 decibels, they had a drink every ll.47 minutes.
But will this save restos? Among those responding to a recent Bon Appetit article, Michael Spitzer voiced a protest I’ve heard so many times….Loud noise may please the young “ but it really is CHASING AWAY many of the 30-50 year old crowd who has the $$$$ to spend.”
Fact is, the 55-plus demographic is the biggest discretionary spender in North America – so why are restaurants throwing it under the bus? The old restaurant model was conservative, designed to give diners good food and service. This is how platinum card holders got addicted to foie gras. To go to say, Alain Ducasse at the Plaza Athenee in Paris was like going to high mass, several hours spent in cathedral calm communing with non pareil cooking. But those opulent padded cells were created before the Ascent of Money.
Today’s restaurateur is likely to be an entrepreneur with an eye firmly on the bottom line. Everyone has to eat and the winning restaurateur is the one who can attract the most customers. That’s why we’re seeing so many clubs, resto-lounges, chains like SirCorp, Oliver & Bonacini, Liberty, Mark McEwan, the Terroni brand to make and maximize profit.
Aren’t there better ways than noise to bring in new customers?. Chef Tim Raue has won two Michelin stars for Ma Restaurant in Berlin with his gluten-free, lactose-free menus. Heston Blumenthal is experimenting with a seafood plate served with a conch shell that houses an IPod. Diners insert the earpieces and, as they eat, they hear the sound of waves crashing and retreating, and the keening of seagulls.
I emailed owner-chef Claudio Aprile and asked him why Origin was so noisy. No reply. Too bad. I’d really like to know how chefs feel when their excellent cooking — which is why a gourmet eats out – is subordinated to lifestyle apps.
I can’t supply a list of retrovore restaurants where we dinosaurs can chat without twisting a tonsil. But I can make suggestions: scan the restaurant’s website for the noisy barebones look. Go early or late to dine, skip the peak hours 7-8.30 pm. When you reserve ask the maitre d’ if the place has music and how loud it is. Don’t be intimidated – call the manager to ask the sound be turned down. Make loud music seem as antisocial as smoking.
Reclaim restaurants for serious eaters! Only then, Bon Appetit!
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