The Soundtrack to Eating: Wine, Dine, and Vibe

Food and music are heavily intertwined with how much people enjoy their social occasions, which is why restaurants put a lot of thought into the music that will back their customer’s meals. Having a good house playlist can make or break the restaurant experience, but when done right, the music is often ignored or forgotten. 

The Soundtrack to Eating is a series in which staff writers write about how food and music are intertwined.

Written by Adithya Srinivas
Illustration by Jessica Wu and Paige Giordano

The Olive Garden experience is pretty standard when it comes to eating at a restaurant: you come in, you get seated, the waiter comes by, hands out menus, and then asks, “What can I start you off with?” Usually, you’d either order an appetizer or drink — but for my last visit, I asked, “Can I by chance get a peek at the house playlist?”

 Yes, it’s odd, I know. So is going to multiple restaurants just to listen to those house playlists  — and yet, that’s exactly what I was doing. Imagine what the restaurant experience would be like without any music. It’d feel like you were on a vacant horror movie set: there’d be eerie silences during every lull in conversation, and there’d be nothing to set the mood — everything would just be… uneasy. Whether you’ve noticed it or not, house playlists are an integral part of the dining experience, and businesses put a lot of thought into what they’re playing over their PA systems. But with the vast number of cuisines, cultures, and price points, there comes an equally large number of ways to set the tone of the restaurant. To get a gauge of how a few favorites went about doing this, I put myself in that mega-awkward situation at a few different places — not just the Garden — over the past few weeks. Here’s what I learned at each of them. 

Olive Garden — Classic Vocal Jazz

 The music at Olive Garden has magical properties that can’t be explained. The difference in how classy I feel between the eggplant parmesan I enjoyed in the restaurant listening to Rat Pack-era vocal jazz and the take-home entrée at my own dinner table listening to 21 Savage in my headphones is, to put it lightly, wide. The sound of ‘40s and ’50s pop jazz embodies the Italian American aesthetic in popular culture, and provides the perfect backdrop for dinners at the Garden. Plus, a lot of these tracks are old deep cuts that no one (including myself) knows the words to, so it’s perfect for easy listening and enjoying your ravioli.

Hopdoddy Burger Bar — Radio Hits

Bars are loud. People are watching the game, having loud conversations, and just trying to have a good time out with family or friends. Even with the heightened volume of everything else, adding a soundtrack of the most popular songs of the time can inspire music conversations, fill lulls in conversation, and generally add to the atmosphere of fun and enjoyment. Hopdoddy executes this to a T, although they do take a more sans hip-hop approach to their song selection by featuring quite a few indie and indie-rock tracks. The last time I ate there, Billie Eilish’s ever-present “Bad Guy” made an expected appearance alongside “No Bullets Spent” by Austin natives Spoon and the Jonas Brothers’ “Sucker,” all amongst many of the current Billboard Top 50. I repeatedly found myself tapping my foot and doing some mellow headbanging to these pop hits as I enjoyed my burger and truffle fries. 

Kerbey Lane Cafe — Daily Genre Rotations

Diners, especially those that are open 24 hours, generally have a more diverse crowd than other restaurants and often have many regular customers (including me) who come in day after day. Of course, they can’t please everyone with their song selections, and they also don’t want to bore the regulars with the same sounds over and over again, so establishments like the Austin favorite Kerbey Lane Cafe have a rotation of popular genres to keep things fresh and entertaining. During my many visits, I’ve heard everything from ‘80s and ‘90s hits to classic rock to country and more. For example, my most recent visit was a 2000s rock day, featuring hits like The White Stripes’ “Icky Thump,” “Bridge Burning” by Foo Fighters, and the ever-popular “Take Me Out” by Franz Ferdinand. The day-to-day variety really complements the menu too, which isn’t pigeon-holed into any specific cuisine or meal type, and I sometimes find the music putting me in the mood for a different entrée every time I go.

Tarka Indian Kitchen — Bollywood Classics

 Bollywood music playing in an Indian restaurant like Tarka Indian Kitchen should come as no surprise — the Indian film industry, and especially the music that comes out of it, is deeply ingrained in the country’s culture. Almost every song played in the restaurant is one I can recognize from the CDs my parents would play in the car when I was younger, and they range from every era of Indian cinema going back to the ‘60s and ‘70s. Another benefit to playing this music is that evergreen Bollywood songs, from “Om Shanti Om” to the Dhoom soundtracks, are also very friendly to western audiences, which is a big benefit to restaurants like Tarka that present a more Americanized aesthetic to draw local customers. The food is also, for better and worse, Americanized, with everything less spicy and more buttered up, but it still tastes great, akin to the experience of listening to a Bollywood hit for the millionth time.

The Melting Pot — Improvised Piano Jazz

 The Melting Pot may not be your definition of a “high-end” dinner, but the restaurant certainly strives for an aesthetic that exudes class. The food is really expensive (and really good, at least in my opinion), people generally dress up a tad bit more than usual, and the music is very cliché for this type of environment. It’s the type of music you’d hear in a typical dinner date scene of a network TV show — soft and sensual piano, timid percussion, and resonant double bass. Honestly, between the cheese and chocolate fondues, your brain will be way more focused on your happy taste buds than your ears, so it feels like here of all places could survive without any music. But in its goal of trying to keep customers’ volume respectful and making sure the restaurant isn’t deathly quiet, piano jazz does the job, so you can’t really knock it.

 I really did eat at every one of these places with a notepad for the music and asked for house playlists every time (which never worked), but minorly embarrassing myself was worth eating all the food. Music and food are the two pillars of any social occasion, so it’s important that restaurants get both of these things right in order to give customers the best possible experience. Through my very scientific and yummy research, I’d say they’re all doing a pretty great job.