The playlist is often the uninvited and unruly guest at your restaurant table. How should you deal with it?

When I lived in New York City, I’d walk 15 minutes from my apartment to the tiny shop between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues where Manny made coffee. Of the many baristas I’ve known, he had the best palate for coffee and a nose to match. I would arrive early because Manny usually worked solo and the line grew swiftly. His customers waited with uncaffeinated stoicism as his sound system pounded out the complete works of Machine Head, his favorite band in the world — shredding guitar riffs, tornadoes of percussion, hellish lyrics, thrash metal at the height of bellicosity. I remember a couple of first-time customers asking Manny to turn the music down. His response was always a glare that said: “Eat sh-t.” Or so he’d translate for me after the queue subsided and I sat sipping his delicious brew, entertained by it all.

That’s sort of my approach to the perennial question of music in restaurants. What wafts through the speakers usually delivers your first impression of place and personality. I consider it my opening conversation with chefs — the soundtrack chosen gives clues to their creativity and mindsets even before you see how the food is plated, the table set, the light modulated. It sets the mood before I move on to the menu and the cooking — my main considerations for deciding whether I like the place enough to contemplate returning.

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