Restaurant review -- The Fat Loaf

We went out for dinner with friends last night. Food - excellent. Service -- excellent. Wine -- excellent, according to the drinkers. Ambience -- um...

The restaurant in question is the newly opened branch of The Fat Loaf, which specialises in traditional British dishes prepared with local high quality ingredients.
( nom nom nom )

It was a very enjoyable evening, save for one thing -- the noise level. The restaurant has hard surfaces all round, including a stone floor. It's noisy, and it's an echoing noise. The back room was only a quarter full when we arrived for the early sitting, and at that point was quite comfortable. But as more people arrived, the noise level went up, and it got into that vicious circle where people raise their voices to be heard over the noise from nearby tables, increasing the noise level, so people speak up even more. This was not helped by the sound level on the background music being gradually ramped up.

I know that some people enjoy sitting in a restaurant where there's a clattering din, and that some restaurants deliberately aim to be noisy, thinking that it gives a "vibrant and popular place" feeling. I don't enjoy it. It's uncomfortable, I have to strain to hear other people, and I end up getting a headache from the sheer level of noise. And I left early, while the rest of my party stayed. I really enjoyed the food, but I'm not eager to go back there, simply because of the noise level over the last twenty minutes or so before it drove me out. I strongly suspect that the Fat Loaf owners are amongst those who think that sort of din is a nice ambience, but they lost a potential repeat customer last night because of it. I'll probably go back there, but not as often as I might have without that hazard.

quiet eateries

My previous post, complaining about the noise in an otherwise very nice restaurant, has struck a chord. It doesn't surprise me, as fandom includes a lot of people who are highly sociable in the right circumstances but who think that "right circumstances" includes "not having to shout over the noise". So if anyone wants to commend favourite eateries that are quiet at least some of the time, go ahead...

The one local to me that I mentioned in the comment thread is the Jade Garden in Manchester. It can get noisy when it's full (or when there's a party of very drunk and very loud Glaswegians on the next table...), but it doesn't have that "all hard surfaces" design ethos that makes for echoing noise, and it doesn't do loud piped music, at least not at the times I normally go in there. And the food's good. :-)

on being a sad fangirl

Because I am a deeply sad fangirl, I have just spent the last twenty minutes teaching my Nokia the Blake's 7 theme tune. The main reason it's taken me a year to get around to teaching it to the new phone is that almost all the calls I get on my phobile nowadays would involve either that or "The hedgehog can never be buggered at all" anyway...