The High St restaurants as noisy as a pneumatic drill!

Convinced it’s louder than ever when you’re eating out? Our decibel test proves you’re right

ENJOYING a meal and a good bottle of wine in a restaurant is one of life’s great pleasures. That is, if you can hear your dinner date over the din.

While restaurants have always been buzzy places — the clatter of forks and spoons, merry chatter and, of course, the sound of wine glasses being chinked in celebration — today dining out is an experience increasingly spoiled by a cacophony of noise.

So much so that when the Mail paid visits to ten popular High Street restaurants armed with a decibel meter — a handheld machine that calculates the level of noise around you by measuring the pressure of sound waves in the air — we discovered they’re actually as loud as a pneumatic drill or a busy nightclub.

Indeed, in Jamie’s Italian in Brighton, the noise level intermittently reaches heights that experts say could damage your hearing after just 15 minutes of consistent exposure.

So, why on earth are restaurants so earsplittingly loud?

Part of the problem is that ‘background’ music is often set to migraine-inducing levels. The trend for open kitchens, often situated right in the middle of the dining area, also provides a soundtrack of crashes and bangs.

Meanwhile, tables are either communal or situated close together, so you’re likely to have to bellow to have the faintest chance of being heard by your dining companion — which, of course, only adds to the loudness.

Children, too, dine out more often than previous generations. And restaurants are frequently vast and open-plan, meaning sound just reverberates around the room.

Add to this the current vogue for ‘minimalist’ decor — hard floors and bare tables where once there were curtains, carpets and tablecloths to soak up sound — and you have a recipe for disaster. So prevalent is the problem that it’s been highlighted in the new Good Food Guide 2018. ‘Restaurants are getting noisier — that’s what our readers, this year in unprecedented numbers, are telling us,’ it says. ‘Noise levels are being raised by music played at Glastonbury force.’ Anyone who’s dined at a popular restaurant recently will agree.

The Good Food Guide’s editor, Elizabeth Carter — who says she’s even had to ask ‘a very well-known chef’ to turn down the music — believes the problems arise when established restaurateurs copy the style of trendy newcomers.

‘It was fine if a young chef opened a small place with bare floors and bare tables somewhere edgy,’ she says. ‘The [restaurants] were small enough to contain the noise.

‘But then, that look went mainstream and restaurateurs were taking that strippedback model and opening establishments for 50, 60 or 100 people. The sound just bounces off everything.’

No doubt it’s a style that’s also much cheaper for restaurateurs to maintain — no tablecloths to wash or cushioned chairs to reupholster when they become worn.

High noise can even increase profit margins. Some studies indicate that the noisier the restaurant, the less time we spend dawdling in there, meaning we’re likely to polish off our meals faster. This gives food establishments the high turnover of diners that increases revenues.

There’s certainly no experience of relaxing with a glass of port and gently digesting your meal to be had in modern restaurants.

But not only is such an environment irritating, being exposed to such sound levels can eventually be harmful: experts say anything at or above 85 decibels — the same as a food mixer being used at close range, for example — can impair your hearing over time.

Astonishingly, though, every single restaurant we visited had noise levels which were intermittently louder than 85 decibels.

The way decibels are measured means an increase of 10 decibels actually means the noise has doubled. So while normal conversation between two people is around 60 decibels, 70 decibels is about the same as a classroom full of chatting children and 80 decibels is the equivalent of a vacuum cleaner at close range.

So, which restaurants pose the greatest risk to your eardrums?

We took our decibel meter, available from most High Street electronics stores for around £40, and sat in the most popular part of the dining area during its busiest periods.

What we discovered might make you consider bringing earplugs on your next night out . . .

AS LOUD AS A BUSY NIGHTCLUB Jamie’s Italian, Brighton Maximum decibels: 103.7 — comparable to a nightclub

WE ALL know Jamie Oliver isn’t exactly one of life’s whispering wallflowers, but the levels of noise at his Italian eatery, which serves pasta and pizza dishes, were the worst of all the restaurants we visited.

Indeed, the moment you walk into this enormous two-storey restaurant, which seats around 120 people, you’re hit with a wall of sound — first from the speakers, then from the diners and waiting staff who bellow to make themselves heard.

It’s nearly full, so we’re ushered upstairs, where there are fewer people. It’s quieter than downstairs. But that soon changes as the evening progresses. More and more diners arrive, and the sound builds up to levels equivalent to the downstairs seating area.

Eventually, we can’t even hear the loud music and have to shout and repeat ourselves continually to have anything resembling a conversation. It’s certainly not helped by the furnishing all being plastic and wood, which does absolutely nothing to soak up the sound.

I look around the too- closelypacked-in tables and everyone is doing the same thing — leaning in to each other to hear. It’s so noisy that when a champagne cork is popped right by us, it doesn’t even register on our decibel meter.

We go to a local nightclub, where I turn on the decibel machine. The display reads 104 — no noisier than Jamie’s.

A CONSTANT BANG, BANG, BANG Pizza Express, Greenwich Maximum decibels: 88.5 — comparable to a food blender

FEW High Streets in the UK are without a Pizza Express, and most of their restaurants are like this one: big, open-plan, with wooden floors and Formica- style tables that can only make any noise worse.

But the biggest villain in this establishment — which seats around 80 people — is the kitchen, which is smack bang inside the restaurant.

The constant bang, bang, bang of bowls and utensils being slammed down by busy chefs while customers chat all around you soon begins to get on your nerves.

Thankfully, while my part of the restaurant is quite busy, I’m not too near the kitchen. Yet, every time there’s a clang, it still makes me — and the decibel meter — jump. I pity those sat right next to it.

That said, after the ear-popping experience of Jamie’s, this isn’t too bad. Yes, the tables are too close together for my liking (there’s just six inches between me and my neighbours, meaning I can hear a lot of their conversation), but even though it’s full of families, the children are mostly well-behaved — a rarity in many restaurants.

LIKE A NOISY TUBE TRAIN PULLING IN Nando’s, Crayford, Kent Maximum decibels: 92.6 — like a station when a Tube train arrives

IT MAY only be a Wednesday evening, but there’s a 20-minute wait for a table in this branch of the popular Portuguese chicken restaurant chain. And for each of those 20 painful minutes, a baby is screaming at the top of its lungs.

When we are finally seated, the rest of the 100- seater restaurant is no quieter because, despite the installation of head-height banquette seating, which should help deaden the sound, this place is plain LOUD.

Guitar music plays stridently, until even that is drowned out by people raising their voices against the smashes of crockery coming from the kitchen, which is, of course, in the restaurant itself.

The quietness of the car park when I leave is a blessed relief.

THIS PUTS A BUILDING SITE TO SHAME McDonald’s, Eltham Maximum decibels: 94.9 — comparable to a pneumatic drill

THE moment I see this 50-plus seater McDonald’s is packed full of children, I want to run. They are everywhere, on practically each table, and some older ones are in big groups without adult supervision.

There’s screaming, shouting and running around, particularly from a couple of ten-year- old girls, whose mother tries to shush them. It doesn’t work — their behaviour sends the decibel meter soaring to a deafening 94.9.

The kitchen is just behind the tills, and staff shout requests and orders to each other. Tables and chairs are all made of easy-wipe plastic that doesn’t absorb sound. Relaxing it’s not.

But, despite regularly hitting peaks of noise that would put a building site to shame, there are moments of peace, too — when the kids are too busy devouring their Happy Meals to bellow at each other.

I’VE NEVER SEEN SO MANY SPEAKERS Ed’s Easy Diner, Bluewater, Kent Maximum decibels: 86.6 — louder than a bin lorry in operation

SITTING in this American- style diner with its Sixties-themed menu in the Bluewater shopping centre, I wonder if the branch is going for the coveted Most Speakers In A Restaurant award. They’re dotted all over the ceiling like stars.

Such is the intensity of the music that, for once, I can hear it above the din. Rather naff tunes like Monster Mash play on loop. Again, the kitchen is in the restaurant area and there are cheap plastic and wood fixtures. So, despite being only three- quarters full, noise levels are painfully high.

There’s a section of the diner with no wall separating it from the shoppers outside. Big mistake. It makes the experience more cacophonic.

AS BAD AS A SMOKE ALARM GOING OFF Frankie & Benny’s, Charlton, London Maximum decibels: 93.4 — comparable to a smoke alarm

ANOTHER American-style diner, another cavernous restaurant that’s mind-bendingly noisy. It’s not even half-full when I visit, yet thanks to the bar and kitchen inside the open-plan venue, it’s thoroughly unpleasant.

My decibel meter is sent into a frenzy, especially by the crash of glasses being removed from a dishwasher.

And the usual suspects — music including American classics such as Come Fly With Me, plastic seats, bellowing staff — don’t help.

Diners have to lean forward to make themselves heard in the booths, which make up the majority of the restaurant.

I soon find myself proving such an environment can be good for the restaurateur’s bank balance: I gulp my spaghetti and salad as fast as I can, just to get out of the place. And when I’m done in double-quick time, the next poor paying customer will be seated as quickly as possible.

A COMMUNAL NOISE-FEST Wagamama, Brighton Maximum decibels: 91.4 — like a train going past

IN MY experience, Asian noodlesand-broth favourite Wagamama is always noisy, but the sheer size of this Brighton branch (I estimate that it can seat 120-plus diners) really ramps things up. Bluesy guitar music plays in the background as I eat.

However, it’s the chefs clattering about in the open-plan kitchen, with the sound of metal utensils slapping onto metal work surfaces, that sends the decibel- meter soaring to 90 and above.

With its long, communal wooden benches, Wagamama has never been somewhere you go for a relaxing evening, but the design means that everyone has to lean in just to hear what their friends and family are saying.

THUMP, THUMP, THUMP! Las Iguanas, Southbank, London Maximum decibels: 93.5 — as loud as a leaf blower

WALKING through the door of this South American- inspired restaurant, I have just one thought: will someone please turn down that dreadful racket?

Thump, thump, thump — the bass line of the R&B music goes straight through you. Even worse, just behind me is a table of loud, braying City boys.

It’s not just me — opposite, a young woman is desperately trying to hear something her father, who’s around 60, is saying. I wonder what he must make of it all.

It’s huge inside and out — 100 in the restaurant and more on the outside terrace — so it would never have been quietly peaceful. But the noise is heightened by a peculiar mosaic floor, which makes scraping chairs sound even louder.

While there’s an open bar, thankfully the kitchen seems to be hidden behind closed doors.

WORSE THAN A KIDS’ SOFT PLAY AREA Burger King, Lewisham, London Maximum decibels: 88.6 — like a lawn mower

WITH Burger King’s cheap vinyl flooring and plastic chairs that are regularly scraped across the floor, this 70-plus seater restaurant was perhaps always going to set my teeth on edge.

Only two-thirds of tables are taken, although from the noise you’d never believe it.

Kids are screaming, others are being dragged across the floor by irate parents and everyone is shouting just to be heard.

It makes a soft play area on a rainy day look like a spa.

Even the decibel meter doesn’t do this place justice. There are no peaks and troughs in the noise — it’s constantly booming, making my headache even worse.

ENDLESS SHOUTING ALL AROUND Giraffe, Southbank, London Maximum decibels: 90.8 — like a truck going past

AT FIRST, Giraffe is like a balm for my shattered ears. It starts so well. Serving ‘world food’, it plays world music — all African and South American drums and Samba beats — at a level you can hear, but don’t feel overwhelmed by.

Yes, it’s busy, and full of every age group tucking into its tapas, burgers and pides (Turkish breads), but tables are spaced well enough apart. A row of banquette- style seats have high enough backs to stop noise echoing around the large room.

And the kitchen is, unusually, behind closed doors.

Then, a noisy group of twentysomethings takes over the table next to mine. They shout relentlessly at each other, sending the decibel meter sky-high.

Maybe they’re used to eating at Jamie’s?