We’ve all experienced it: a dining room that gradually fills up, with its ambient noise level creeping up and up. You raise your voice a little to compensate, and even though you know you’re all but shouting at your friends and they’re shouting at you, it’s hard to follow the conversation. Eventually, a particularly boisterous table starts bellowing to one another. Then you hate life.
You don’t have to be an obstreperous grandpa to find this situation vexatious. SoundPrint, a crowdsourcing app that calls itself the “Yelp for Noise” has meticulously gone through more than 800 restaurants to determine which are quiet and which are a little noisy. And unlike those clickbait-y surveys that tell you San Francisco is America’s 11th Best City for Labor Day, this has genuine utility. Prolonged exposure to noise levels higher than 85 decibels can be hazardous to your hammer and stirrup, and the average of San Francisco restaurants is 78 decibels, higher than a typical conversation (60 decibels). For comparison, a nearby thunderclap registers at only 120.
While you have to download the app to get the full list, SoundPrint does give a whisper-quiet shout-out to classics like Acquerello, Alice’s (in Noe Valley) and 16th Street’s deaf-owned-and-operated pizza joint Mozzeria,
At the very least, we can thank the rise of open kitchens for a reduction in chef-driven screaming at hapless line cooks.
