When I lived in New York City, I would walk 15 minutes from my apartment to the tiny shop between Columbus and Amsterdam avenues where Manny made coffee.
Of the many baristas I have known, he had the best palate for coffee and a nose to match. I would arrive early because Manny usually worked solo and the line grew swiftly. His customers waited with uncaffeinated stoicism as his sound system pounded out the complete works of Machine Head, his favorite band in the world — shredding guitar riffs, tornadoes of percussion, hellish lyrics, thrash metal at the height of bellicosity.
I remember a couple of first-time customers asking Manny to turn the music down. His response was always a glare that said: “Eat sh-t.” Or so he would translate for me after the line subsided and I sat sipping his delicious brew, entertained by it all.
Illustration: Louise Ting
That is sort of my approach to the perennial question of music in restaurants. What wafts through the speakers usually delivers your first impression of place and personality. I consider it my opening conversation with chefs — the soundtrack chosen gives clues to their creativity and mindsets even before you see how the food is plated, the table set, the light modulated. It sets the mood before I move on to the menu and the cooking — my main considerations for deciding whether I like the place enough to contemplate returning.
Of course, I tend to eat solo. If you are with friends, I presume you would rather converse with your tablemates — and hear them rather than read lips. That is when music can be the uninvited and unruly guest: Divisive (you don’t like the playlist), discomfiting (you’re affronted by NSFW lyrics with your pasta), disruptive (I can’t hear you).
And the customer is not always right: Requests to adjust the volume or sub out a song typically fall on deaf ears, especially when the chefs are culinary auteurs and their restaurants a form of expression.
It is probably easier to get the air conditioning turned down.
Restaurants had music before there were recordings. In the late 19th century, the bands and small orchestras that were brought in to perform for diners provided in-your-face entertainment rather than background soothing. Mood-setting came with the first gramophones. Jukeboxes — a proto-Spotify — also helped. Customers could choose their own songs, but the machines soon became too down-market for the fancy joints.
In the 1930s, Muzak — which was a real company — began to produce packages of “elevator music” that many restaurants turned to for restrained if enervated atmospherics. Most temples of haute cuisine have a library-like calm broken only by convivial tittering or the server explaining the dish at hand. If there is music at all, it is usually the luxe whisperings of high romanticism, a subtle percolation of the air in case your ears get lonely.
Famously, Ferran Adria’s El Bulli on the Costa Brava had no music at all.
Many restaurants today do not want you to be sedated. It is not just about decibels. It is about vibe. Songs at any volume help signal that a restaurant is attuned to the cultural zeitgeist.
“For a few months, every other restaurant seemed to be playing Steve Monite’s Only You,” said Lindsey Peckham, co-founder of POMME, a hospitality consulting firm in New York.
And it was the original 1984 dance single by the Nigerian singer they had put on, not the bootlegged 2017 live performance by Frank Ocean that “rediscovered” Monite. That curatorial effort to go at the recording’s roots is important to the cognoscenti — and a way of signaling coolness to everyone else.
“It was serious bonus points to have African disco,” Peckham said. “That was the real vibe.”
That is the kind of musical cachet restaurants want: aural gems that catch your ear, stimulating a sense other than taste, that make you feel not just au courant, but somehow elite.
Ignacio Mattos’ Corner Bar in New York City has music curated by DJ Stretch Armstrong, a music producer and former host of a popular radio hip hop talk show.
At Cadet next to Newington Green, chef Jamie Smart finds obscure but intriguing tracks on Spotify, including Love in the Darkness, a 2003 piece by a protean French band that is both jazzy and dark.
A few blocks away at the bright and hip Hector’s, Hey Young World by Slick Rick is streaming through the speakers and customers come up to ask the kids behind the counter (including Noah Tucker, who is a DJ when not tending bar) for links to the playlists they have curated via Spotify.
However, it is easy to get things wrong. I have sat petrified as a wine bar I had come to love decided to debut its new soundtrack: Versions of recent pop hits sung bossa-nova style. Think Amy Winehouse sung by Astrid Gilberto.
If it were not for the wine...
In 2018, the New York Times ran a story about Ryuichi Sakamoto — the most discerning of musicians and one of the stars (along with David Bowie) of Merry Christmas, Mister Lawrence — and how he volunteered to redo the playlist of his favorite Japanese restaurant in Manhattan because he absolutely hated the selections.
Bad Brazilian pop, he said.
Kajitsu — probably the best vegan restaurant in town — very wisely acceded to his request. He charged nothing. It is the kind of cool that money cannot buy. Sadly, Sakamoto died earlier this year; and Kajitsu closed in September last year.
The restaurant quest for the right vibe often gets conflated with party atmosphere and the dictates of a chef’s ego. If the politics of sound matter to your dining experience, decide whether you want to be entertained or soothed. Then check the playlist. If you are willing to give the unfamiliar a go, great. If not, better make sure the food will get you going through the experience.
That, and the wine. And the coffee.
Howard Chua-Eoan is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion covering culture and business. He previously served as Bloomberg Opinion’s international editor and is a former news director at Time magazine.
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