SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Vox presents an article about restaurant noise levels and why they've risen over the years.
When the Line Hotel opened in Washington, DC, last December, the cocktail bars, gourmet coffee shops, and restaurants that fill its cavernous lobby drew a lot of buzz. Housed in a century-old church, the space was also reputedly beautiful.
My first visit in February confirmed that the Line was indeed as sleek as my friends and restaurant critics had suggested. There was just one problem: I wanted to leave almost as soon as I walked in. My ears were invaded by a deafening din.
[...] In reckoning with this underappreciated health threat, I’ve been wondering how we got here and why any well-meaning restaurateur would inflict this pain on his or her patrons and staff. I learned that there are a number of reasons — and they mostly have to do with restaurant design trends. In exposing them, I hope restaurateurs will take note: You may be deafening your staff and patrons.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Friday April 20 2018, @06:58PM
I check the good food guides and good pub guides, and I avoid the highly recommended ones because they are always crowded. Very often these places seem to get high votes (in the case of those guides that rely on the users' feedback) only because they are crowded which seems to appeal to the kind of people who fill in survey forms, and because many people assume that if something is popular it must be good, and also simply because the more people using a place then naturally the more survey returns they tend to get for it. I cannot say the food at these high rated places is generally any better (some exceptions), and I find it hard to taste food anyway when there is 80db going on in your ears.
Unlike some posters here and the critics in TFA, I don't mind being the only customer in a place, I prefer it and tend to go early: it is quiet, you get better attention, and you can read a book or whatever undisturbed by a drunk party crowd at the next table.