Several years ago, probably over a decade ago, slashdot published an article (that I failed to find) on restaurant noise. Yes, people were complaining about noisy restaurants back then.

To summarize, a restaurant with dining on two floors set up one with hard surfaces, bare brick walls an an exposed ceiling. It was loud! The other was traditional high-end room with wood tables, drapes an other soft sound absorbent surfaces. It was very quiet. Both were serving the same "New American" menu from the same kitchen.

After 6 months the "quiet" floor was closed and refitted to match the noisy floor because the loud floor was booked solid while the quiet floor always had available tables. The hypothesis was that noisy restaurants were perceived as "exciting" while quiet ones were "boring".

The bottom line was that, no matter how much people complain about noise, they prefer that to quiet dining. Loud dining rooms are often very much by design, not acoustic incompetence.