Pastis Express is such an attractive bistro, good food and wine, pleasant surroundings, comfortable seats – but oh, the noise. We’ve come for a cozy evening but we can’t hear each other speak. The friend opposite me is moving his lips but I can’t hear a word. In a lull he calls one of our party Elizabeth. She mouths her name is Linda. He’s so sorry Belinda. You can imagine how more complicated concepts end up. Iraq? Is that the Great Karnak? We’ve become verbal Mr. McGoos. Finally, two of us go outside to chat.

Ok, it’s Friday night at a popular Rosedale neighbourhood place and the folks are having a good time. The lads are shouting at the bar and there’s a baby joining in, we almost fell over the plastic baby carriage by the door – what, can’t Rosedale afford babysitters? We seem to be the only people having hearing problems - but perhaps that’s because the crowd have the relaxed look of regulars who’ve come to commune as much as converse. Very much like the habitués of a pub, come to think of it.

I know I’d enjoy Pastis Express except for the noise. The food is standard bistro fare and reasonably priced. Brandade of salt cod, excellent fish soup, crispy minty grilled sardines, steak tartare seasoned just right, pink lamb chops, medium rare and tender pan-seared calves’ liver: the veal scaloppini looks like corduroy but tastes ok. I think the presentation could be more appealing: the food appears to have been thrown at the plates. Mounds of frites obscure the steak tartare, mounds of salad obscure the brandade. And service is spotty. When coffee is brought with the dessert, I feel we’re being nudged along, but perhaps that is simply because Georges Gurnon, Pastis’ suavely controlling maitre d’, isn’t here this evening.

If we had come to Pastis Express on any other night than Friday, would it have been so noisy? After I’d praised a restaurant, friends booked in for a special dinner only to be unable to hear each other say Happy Birthday. Where were my ears? My reply: what day of the week was it?’Another variable: I don’t think noise is as intrusive when dining a deux rather than with a group. Expectations too play a role. I expect a bar to have a level of noise that I wouldn’t tolerate when dining.

Complaints about noisy restaurants are crescendoing along with noise itself. The inconvenient truth is that is we are a noisy society, and getting noisier. If you walk around with an ipod pasted in your ear, you become a noise addict 7/24. It’s all very well to slaver over the image of foodies whispering reverently in a famous two-star restaurant in France, but increasingly, fresh foie gras is taking second place to noise in Toronto. I can think of atleast two places where chefs are scuppered by loud music. I can only assume loud music is a moneyspinner. I swear the walls of Blowfish, at Bathurst and Queen, actually buckle with the beat – but the resto lounge is turning people away.

It’s the same across North America. Irene Virbilia, the restaurant critic for the Los Angeles Times, recently wrote “Silence is deadly. Or so most restaurateurs must think.. The fancier places used to be exempt…but no more…With the demise of the tablecloth, which used to help dampen the sound, and bare walls and windows everywhere, it can be just as hard to have a conversation at an expensive restaurant as anywhere else.”

But what’s a restaurateur to do? If loud pays, loud plays. But does loud really boost receipts? Brian Wansink, head of Cornell’s Food and Brand Lab, and author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More than We Think, has done a couple of studies on this very subject. He found that noisy restaurants turned over tables faster, good for the till, but that if a restaurant wasn’t noisy, it made more money on alcohol. A lot more. “We were finding the average bill for alcohol was about 40 percent higher if it was a quiet place instead of a noisy place. People wanted to stick around longer and socialize.”
I’m now being asked where the quiet restaurants are. Hmmm. I can start packing a noisemeter as the restaurant critics at the San Francisco Chronicle have been doing for years and print the results along with the review. Apparently the balmy countryside comes in at 25dba. No wonder it’s so peaceful. After 65 dba, normal conversation is difficult and at 75 dba it is impossible and the stomach contracts – I think this is Pastis Express’ decibel level, atleast I hope so because at 80 dba, the noise will have permanently damaged my hearing. Should the meter zoom to 120 dba – significantly, the level of a rock concert stage – call the Sound Police!

This is what bothers me. I don’t want to become yet one more Mrs. Grundy in our increasingly intolerant and illnatured society. I get dyspeptic when I remember how a bossy woman upbraided a smoker who was smoking in a “smoking” area. And I cheered when similarly snubbed smoker replied “I am a recovering alcoholic and I can’t bear the smell of alcohol on your breath.” I try to control myself in a restaurant when a spoiled brat is tolerated by a fawning Mom, but will I be able to restrain myself when lactating moms start asserting their right to breastfeed their infants in restaurants?

I push aside the grim future of restaurants divided into zones for drinking, nondrinking, children, breastfeeding Moms, celiacs, lactose intolerant, crazies, and ponder a noisemeter.

In the meantime I’d like to hear from diners about their noisy restaurant experiences. The best tactic for now is to call a restaurant you plan to visit and simply ask “Is your restaurant noisy” And you can always throw in “Above 65 dba.”

**Pastis Express 1158 Yonge Street, 416-928-2212 Food: Dinner for two plus tax: $100

gina@ginamallet.com