Clark Wolf's Rants, Raves, Diatribes...and a few other Thoughts

CBS Sunday Morning!

Mac and Cheese segment with Serena Atschull for CBS Sunday Morning.

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What did you say? Come again? I'm sorry, but I can't hear you over the clatter in this restaurant.

Back to the page. Ah, much better.

There aren't a lot of things that we as a populace agree on, it seems, but one would probably be that restaurants are getting noisier and noisier.

"There's no excuse for it," said Clark Wolf, a New York-based consultant who has worked with numerous restaurants in Las Vegas.

"They're stupid," he said of restaurant owners. "They're going for easy, quick, fast, high returns."

Jean Hertzman, assistant professor and culinary arts program director for the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is researching noise levels in restaurants. She attributes the increasing din at least in part to the move away from carpet, draperies and other noise-absorbing materials, including "silencers," which were pads under the tablecloths or part of the tablecloths themselves, "so when you're placing a glass or silverware, it's not as loud. There's not a lot of places that use those anymore. That's part of why some restaurants use two tablecloths."

"Part of it is the casualization of restaurants," Hertzman said of increased noise levels. For example, she said, steakhouses -- ubiquitous at Strip resorts -- "used to be considered fine dining, with traditional design, tablecloths and things like that.

"When they tried to go to a younger, more casual demographic, then the decor's different: open floor patterns, industrial ceilings. That's definitely going to make it noisier."

Another reason, she said, is that many restaurants space their tables closely together, and that many are using open kitchens, so that clatter is added to the clinks and conversation in the dining room.

But what's too loud?

"When the noise distracts you from being able to understand the conversation of the people you are with," she said.

Hertzman said her research has found that people 55 and older tend to express more concern about noise levels, as do people with graduate degrees.

Generally, she said, it's not loud music that gives people the impression that they're eating in a noisy restaurant, but the noise from conversations around them. But Wolf said misuse of music contributes to the problem.

"The proper use of music is to soften the naturally hard sounds," he said. There is a place for ambient noise and music in a restaurant, he added, as a way to engage customers.

"If the sound of the room is dead, it's trouble, too," Wolf said. "Nobody eats in church. But it's supposed to support your evening, not supply it for you.

"The music in a restaurant should be under the conversation, not over it. Otherwise, you've gone to a concert."

Full article here