This sounds like 90% of the restaurants in central Illinois and why the wife and I do not go out as much. Many of the quiet family style or old school steakhouses are gone, replaced with sport bars with 300 televisions all cranked to 120db. Holding a conversation is pointless. There are only a few places we can have a nice quiet dinner with conversation but like everything I like, that is not in fashion anymore.
That's a perfect description of what what's out there, complete with concrete floors to maximize the racket. This sort of "ambiance" combined with the expense, means we rarely eat out.
With hearing loss and wearing a cochlear implant in one ear and a hearing aid in the other, I am especially sensitive to ambient noise. I can hear exactly one conversation at a time, if there are two, I can understand neither of them so noisy places are, as Monty Python would say, "right out." But we have found a few quieter places and have also found that some of the busier (and noisier) places that we like (such as a chain steak house near us) are much more manageable for brunch or a late-lunch. If we mostly skip lunch and go out to eat around 3 o'clock, the crowds and the noise are often not bad at all. Of course, since we both work, that limits us to what days we can do that.
