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We Don’t Do Silence: Restaurant Noise Redux
I recently spent a little time trying to track down when it was that intentionally loud restaurants began to be perceived as an issue on the urban dining scene. The earliest reference to the subject I was able to find in a major newspaper was “De Gustibus; Restaurant Noise: Does it Spoil a Good Meal?“ an article by Marion Burros published by The New York Times in October, 1983. Although Burros begins by noting that “Either by ignorance or by design a majority of the trend-setting restaurants opening these days do not consider the noise factor,” she quickly goes on to itemize different ways in which restaurant noise levels were being very consciously manipulated. Writing about the popular new restaurant Ernie’s on the Upper West Side, Burros states, “It was designed to give patrons an opportunity to size up the new arrivals. Conversation is virtually impossible but the restaurant is jammed.” Of the just-opened Cafe Luxemburg, Burros says, it ”could have been designed to be quieter if that was what the owners were seeking; they were not. They deliberately set out to create a space with a high energy level that would look and sound crowded and, therefore, successful, that would attract the young, affluent crowd. It’s difficult to book a table because those who want to be part of the scene love the energy level. The tiled walls, terrazzo floor and zinc bar make the sound reverberate as the place pulsates. Any slack in conversation is taken up by greatly amplified Muzak.”
The desire to create a place where people are seen rather than heard — a high energy space, which is architecturally reflective and intellectually numbing — remains of course de rigueur among trendy restaurant designers to this day.
A few years after the Times story, Judith Sims at the Los Angeles Times filed that paper’s first major report on the subject — “Taking the Din with your Dinner.” Sims’ article fills out a little more of the story behind the appeal of restaurant noise. In an interview with Sims, Barbara Lazaroff, who had designed such ahead-of-the-curve loud restaurants as Spago and Chinois on Main, notes “I think people want a fun, exciting atmosphere. When you walk into a space and there’s no noise at all, you feel like, ‘it’s dead in here.’” If quiet is equated with morbidity and stasis, then, the logic is, loudness lets you know you are alive and enjoying yourself. Sims also spoke with architects. Josh Schweitzer who had designed “one of the loudest restaurants in town,” the Border Grill, told Sims, ”It’s not so much what we do, as what we don’t do. The old style ‘rug joints,’ with red drapes, red-flocked wallpaper, red carpets, people aren’t so much interested in that anymore.” Instead, Schweitzer opined, what works is a place that’s visually more complex but clean and open. As a result, when you pack people in, you get more of a party environment.” There are a number of questions raised by Schweitzer’s riff. Why should a place designed to be clean and open but packed with people create a party environment? Whatever the explanation, Schweitzer is clearly picking up on a key trend that remains operative when he mentions that concept of a party environment: the restaurants, he says, “are trying to be the clubs.”
I remember about a year ago interviewing an architect from the young “design and concept” firm AvroKO, which is responsible for some of New York’s most egregiously noisy restaurants. I was trying to get at the thinking behind their predilection for mounting an all-out sonic assault on diners in their spaces. Although the executive I spoke with presented himself as being on the cutting edge of a new trend, what he told me in fact overlapped closely with Schweitzer’s remarks 24 years ago. (It’s easy to forget history when it’s too noisy):
“We’re always battling aesthetically because we like hard surfaces. It’s intuitive. Other people have carpet. We hate carpet. We hate soft ceilings. People like lively spaces. We go for hard brick surfaces. As we get older it’s harder to distinguish sounds anyway. That’s geographical. And age related. I do think that people are more accepting now of not having table cloths. To get three stars you used to have to have a tablecloth. Now you don’t have tablecloths. You’ve taken out a huge amount of soft surfaces that absorb a lot of sound. We don’t do tablecloths. What’s more interesting to me than why a place is loud, is the effect that changing other design elements happens to have on sound. It’s not that people look at sound and create the rest of experience based on that—the rest of the experience has created a greater acceptance of sound. Just as it’s okay not to have table cloths, there’s a reaction or a symptom of that which makes for a louder space. We don’t focus on sound. Other things trump it. I’ve noticed in our spaces that they’re very loud. I sometimes have a hard time sitting in Public or Stanton Social. But I’ll go over to the side and it will be better. Sound is just not our first priority. I don’t mean to sound cavalier.”
The only thing better than not “sounding” cavalier would be to not be cavalier. But what is the sound of not being cavalier? Maybe that sound is inaudible in all the noise.
The close of Burros’ piece describes being at the Odeon in the early evening, before other diners start arriving in volume: “Conversation, laughter, the clink of glasses and the clatter of plates are at a warm and friendly level. You can hear yourself think and can converse normally with your companions. There was a time when that was called civilized dining.”
One of the main reasons our world is so loud is because of a larger societal tilt away from intimacy as a value toward the notion that we’re summoned by the god of the body to sustain a perpetual collective ecstasy.
