Music To Increase Checks & Creativity in the Kitchen

The tunes might feel like more of an accessory since a hot beat doesn’t come directly from a frying pan. It’s easier to think about them as an essential part of the experience when you describe songs and cuisine with the same adjectives. For example, let’s take it back to before Daft Punk’s split and when “Daft Punk Is Playing at My House” was maybe on your Shuffle—back in the late ’00s/early ’10s.

There was a boom of small-plates restaurants that played hip indie rock because…well, they wanted to attract a hip young crowd. One of the mainstays was M83’s synthy, sax-y hit “Midnight City,” which partly stands out because of its unembarrassed loudness. Eater’s Dixler Canava noted that “loud,” “unembarrassed,” and “big” were used to describe the era’s food trends, which included lots of salt and the rise of sriracha sauce.

She also called out the ubiquity of LCD Soundsystem’s “I Can Change.” It’s hip, but it also carries a simple chord progression with no real climax and clocks in at about six minutes, which makes pretty inviting background music for guests to indulge themselves within. In fact, making the right playlist is so important, some restaurants have employed music selectors to grab that cool crowd.

“A lot of [professional and amateur selectors] have the same cool references,” Jonathan Shecter, who founded background music provider Playback Prodigy, told Vox. “They’re trying to project the image of cool, left of center, contemporary but not obvious.”

Of course, music’s relationship with food isn’t limited to what the cool college kids of the aughts played. It’s also grounded in cold, genreless scientific evidence. Turns out, what you play is sort of a balancing act. Studies have shown that guests chew 30 percent faster when listening to up-tempo music, which is obviously great if you want people to come and go, not so great if you’re actually trying to get them to stay a while. And on the slower end, customers’ bills tend to increase by about 23 percent. If you’re really trying to finish that bottle of tequila, play the music a little louder. A French study said that guys run through drinks quicker when they risk hearing loss.

Music isn’t just a pace setter or a vibe enhancer. Like some sort of invisible seasoning, it also apparently affects the actual dish. The Journal of Culinary Science & Technology concluded that chill classical music can make your food taste better. There’s even a study that suggests what you ought to do about that bittersweet toffee if you want it more sweet than bitter (play higher-pitched sounds) or more bitter than sweet (lower). There’s nothing on if switching the pitches while the toffee is already in your mouth will confuse your tastebuds, though.

Obviously you’re not worried about if the mood is right in a restaurant all the time, or even trying to cook for other people. But music can be important when you’re cooking for one and not trying to trick yourself into eating faster for some reason. Epicurious’ Rachel Karten wrote about how switching from listening to her usual podcasts to a playlist from a Bon Appétit editor made cooking “more meditative,” with a few dance breaks in between.

We’re not saying meditation, dancing, or meditative dancing—if that exists—are what you should strive for in a cooking sesh. In fact, chefs don’t have a consensus on what you should listen to while you’re throwing down in the kitchen. Joey Campanaro is more of a Bob Marley guy, but he does believe good music goes hand in hand with good food regardless of if reggae is your thing.