A FIFTY+SA reader named Jo wrote to us recently with a request: where can she eat without shouting across the table? It turns out a lot of you are asking the same thing. And it turns out an Adelaide audiologist has been building the answer for six years.
Why restaurants got so loud
This isn’t nostalgia. Dining rooms have changed. Carpet, upholstery, drapes and tablecloths have given way to polished concrete, exposed brick, tile, steel and glass. Ceilings went up, walls came down, and the kitchen moved into the room with you. Every one of those decisions reflects sound rather than absorbing it.
Then there’s the Lombard effect: in a noisy room, people raise their voices without noticing. Danish acoustician Jens Holger Rindel put a number on it. For roughly every two decibels a room gains, diners push their voices up another one. A room fills, everyone gets louder, and then everyone gets louder again in response. Most restaurants run at 70 to 80 decibels. Research suggests older diners need closer to 50 to follow a conversation comfortably.
Australia’s largest survey of hearing health, published in The Lancet Global Health this year, found 41.7 per cent of Australians aged 50 and over have measurable hearing loss. That’s more than two in five. There is no Australian standard holding venues accountable for any of it.
The Adelaide woman mapping conversation-friendly venues
Laura Drexler is an Adelaide audiologist and occupational noise assessor who spent twenty years as a paramedic before retraining. Her 2019 Master of Audiology research became The Ambient Menu, a platform rating venues on one thing: whether you can hold a conversation in them. Venues are graded from Quiet to Lively, and the platform now covers South Australia, Queensland and Victoria, fielding around 10,000 searches a month.
Quiet restaurants in Adelaide’s CBD and inner suburbs
Hut and Soul, CBD. The first venue in Australia to earn Ambient Menu accreditation. This Malaysian and Indonesian dining room is carpeted and acoustically treated, with speakers positioned around the room rather than over tables.
Coal Cellar + Grill, Hilton Adelaide. Carpeted floors, booth seating, plush furnishings, well-spaced tables, low music, and a kitchen kept away from diners. Avoid Champagne Hour between 4pm and 6pm, and Friday evenings when the after-work crowd arrives.
Treasury 1860, King William Street. Carpet, soft furnishings, generous table spacing and a kitchen set well back. One warning: the adjacent bar has floorboards and no acoustic panelling.
Namaste Nepalese, Parkside. Carpeted floors, tapestries, tablecloths, curtains and thick walls between rooms. Ring ahead and mention your hearing, and they’ll set up a separate room if the main one is full.
The Duke of Brunswick, Gilbert Street. This pub publishes its own room-by-room acoustic access guide. Tables 25 and 36 near the staircase form a low-sensory area with no music, and the carpeted Adelaide Room carries no footstep or chair-scraping noise.
Beyond the city
Lenzerheide, Hawthorn. Seven minutes from the CBD with acoustic panels in the high ceiling, plush furnishings, white tablecloths, well-spaced tables and two private dining rooms.
SheShells, Glenelg. Built for sound from the outset with cork walls, corrugated iron, and acoustic foam ceilings. Peak is 6pm to 7.30pm; either side is calmer.
Watervale Hotel, Clare Valley. Three private dining rooms, free for groups of six or more, where you choose the music volume. Staff will turn it off entirely on request.
Angove, McLaren Vale. Acoustic panelling and what assessors call the ‘library corner’, soft furnishings and booth seating that encourage people to lower their voices.
Largs Pier Hotel, Largs Bay. Carpet, well-spaced tables, separate rooms, and a kitchen away from the dining room. Weekday lunch is the pick.
Ask for the room within the room
It is almost never the restaurant that is quiet or loud. It is the part of the restaurant you’re sitting in. Treasury 1860’s dining room is calm while its bar is not. Even Africola, which is loud inside, is fine at the outdoor tables.
Request a corner or a table against a wall. Ask for somewhere well lit, so you can see faces clearly. Ask whether there’s live music that night. Book earlier or later than the crowd. And if you wear hearing aids, position yourself with your back to the bulk of the room, where the directional microphones work best.
Several Adelaide venues, including 2KW, Aurora and Namaste, will actively seat you in the quiet spot if you mention it when booking. Nobody will do it if you don’t ask.
Follow Fifty+SA on Instagram and Facebook, and subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
