Complaints about noise continue to dominate restaurant reviews. Here’s what experts say about how sound affects our bodies and what we can do to mitigate it. An acoustics professor, a food critic and an audio producer are staring at their devices in a Peruvian restaurant in downtown Washington.
“What are you getting?” “Let’s see ...
it’s fluctuating.” “I just got 80.” “Whoa, it just spiked to 87!” These are sound-level readings taken from our table, a corner booth overlooking the dining area of Pisco y Nazca.
I’m Bishop Sand, an audio producer at The Washington Post , and I’m here with Lily Wang, who runs the acoustics programme at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln’s Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction, and my colleague Tom Sietsema, the Post ’s food critic for the past 24 years. Sietsema eats out about 10 times a week for work and, for each review , he notes the sound level readings in decibels. In his 2019 review of this restaurant, Sietsema began: “If you’ve ever wondered how loud a jet engine sounds at takeoff, I can give you an approximation.
” He was not exaggerating. The sound levels blow away a normal, 60-decibel conversation. “This is the loudest restaurant I’ve ever reviewed in D.
C.,” he tells us as we look over the menu. “Here, it was 100 decibels at the bar during happy hour, and not much better in the centre of the dining room.
” I start to ask how many of his reviews warn diners that they’.
