The Tune of Your Food: Picking the Right Music for Your Dining Experience

In Beijing’s restaurants, we get our fair share of strange sounds at the dinner table. Everything from sad, crooning boys wielding acoustic guitars on Guijie to painted ladies singing folk songs while acrobatically spinning fabric on their fingers at Dongbei restaurants, it’s all available to make your dining experiences just a tad more awkward.

Elsewhere, blogs seem to pop up daily recommending the latest and greatest songs to pair with your ceviche or lava cake. Despite the popularity of food and music pairings, the fact of the matter is nothing is more subjective and difficult to influence than musical tastes. Certain elements of these combinations definitely ring true. Playing the right music not only complements a meal but can also elevate the dining experience to new levels by engaging all the senses. Much like the first time I bit into a flaky spring roll while listening to a pan flute version of “My Heart Will Go On” (Gheorghe Zamfir) at my childhood Thai restaurant.

We couldn’t afford to bring in someone who possesses the neurological disorder known as lexical-gustatory synesthesia (a person who can taste sound) and systematically savor our selection of music and food pairings. However, we were able to create a list of successful tips to make sure the playlist you choose is complementary to whatever food you are serving.

The Case for Authenticity
The first pro tip might seem a little obvious, but why not pick music from the country or region where the food originates? This to us makes a little more sense than just laying down a generic house track, which seems to be all the rage. Not only is this the easiest way to make sure that the music fits the atmosphere, but it also creates an aura of authenticity to the feast, which is always desirable. For example, when you think of hamburgers or pizza, what comes to mind instantly is rock or punk music. The food recalls those 80s teen movies where kids are constantly hanging outside their favorite greasy burger joints listening to Hall & Oates or The Ramones. Cheesy grease and raw energy were made to be consumed in unison.

Play the Classics
These are the songs that have stood the test of time and have successfully woven themselves into the cultural fabric of music appreciation. We have been conditioned through hearing these tracks, from legends like Sam Cooke or Nina Simone in movies and television, to know that thy generate a particular response from the listener that is generally pleasurable and, when heard in a restaurant, usually results in a delightfully smooth dining experience. Ask yourself if you could imagine this song being used in a soundtrack to a major motion picture? If yes, then it should probably work perfectly to aurally enhance the dining experience of your guests. Or just download every Motown or soul compilation that you can find, and you are guaranteed to have no complaints about the music.

Don’t Play Too Loud
There needs to be a healthy volume, loud enough to hear but still a comfortable level for conversation. On the other hand it can’t be low enough that you can overhear the conversations of other tables in the restaurant. It’s a fine balance, but it must be maintained. In a perfect world, you would have somebody with a hand constantly on the dial, but that is essentially a DJ’s job. Too many times we’ve been to restaurants that were playing not only terrible music but also music that was at an earsplitting level that just wasn’t necessary. On the other end of the spectrum, maybe the music was too low, and we were forced to listen to the sounds of a total sleazebag trying a little too hard to woo his date into submission (gross).

Repetition Should Be Avoided
Make sure that your playlist is long enough so that a dinner won’t hear the same song twice, or just use Xiami, Spotify, or some other web-based platform that will keep going infinitely. This too is risky because the well being of your ambiance is put into the hands of a taste making algorithm. Don’t be afraid to just find a local music nerd and commission him or her to make a never ending playlist. One time I was at an Italian restaurant with the most delicious selections and they were playing Frank Sinatra’s “My Way”, which is an appropriate pairing but it was a scratched CD and played on repeat, which instantly turned the experience into an Italian themed nightmare from the mind of Wes Craven.

More stories by this author here.

Email: danielkippwhittaker@thebeijinger.com