Dining at the HoH Grill: Eat Well, Hear Well!

Gael Hannan
February 21, 2012

People with hearing loss love to eat – because we are human, after all.

But when we eat out, we enter one of our most challenging communication environments – The Restaurant. Whether it’s a hole-in-the-wall diner or a fancy establishment, most restaurants offer, along with the appetizer, main course and dessert, a fine selection of communication barriers: noise, bad lighting, poor sightlines, group chatter, noise, unfamiliar speech patterns, people who don’t understand our needs, and more noise.

To survive the eating out nightmare, we have four choices:

1. Choose a restaurant with a perfect physical and acoustical atmosphere (yeah, and good luck in finding that!)

2. Go into super-advocate mode and try to make the environment as accessible as possible

3. Eat your soup, pay the bill and leave

4. Stay home and order in.

I have done all of the above, especially #2. But, sometimes #4 is the most attractive option, especially when you’re having a bad-hearing day. You know the kind of day – the CI or hearing aid seems dull and under-performing, you make an embarrassing hearing faux pas at the office (and you know they’ll be laughing for years), and pardon seems to your favorite word of the day. Struggling through a restaurant meal would be just more than you can take without breaking down in sobs.

But sometimes, the pull of the pub or bistro is just too strong to resist. We eat out on a regular basis, because I don’t always feel like cooking and frequently forgot to buy groceries – and we have lots of friends who also don’t like to cook or shop.  But the most important reason for braving the restaurant nightmare is that I don’t know how to make Tom Yum soup, which I must have twice a month or I become crabby.

But if I had a couple of million dollars lying around, there would be a fourth option to offer: a communication-accessible restaurant! If word got out that there’s a place with good food catering to people with hearing loss, I bet I’d make a mint.

Just imagine, a barrier-free dining experience – you can tell by the welcoming sign in the entranceway.

Welcome To The HoH Grill

Eat Well, Hear Well *

* Quiet Atmosphere, Good Food

* Round tables with adjustable lighting and

 looped upon request

* Spare CI/hearing aid batteries on site

* Visual alarms

* Carpeted, curtained, table linens

* Staff trained in articulation, sign language and technical devices

* Hearing People Also Welcome

Of course, there are a few extra things that would enhance a happy and communication-accessible dining experience that can’t really be advertised on a sign. This is the basic stuff that you learned – or were supposed to learn – as a kid.

* Don’t talk with your mouth full.

* Try to keep spinach off your teeth when talking.

* Face someone when you’re talking to them.

* If you can’t say something nice (or worth repeating), don’t say anything at all.

* One person talks at a time.

* Drink alcohol moderately. If you’re going to drink a lot, please understand that you may slur your words and/or become overly loud.

* The clatter of silverware and dishware can be teeth-jarring for hearing aid and CI users.  Handle with care.

Apart from all that, enjoy, enjoy, enjoy!  Dining out should be a joyous sharing of food, drink and good conversation – for everyone, regardless of hearing levels.

  1. Gael, you have an uncanny ability to put in words what the rest of us all think (but never say). Love this idea. Go for it!!!

  2. The writer has obviously “soldiered” through many very trying times in every conceivable kind of restaurant, eatery and pub. If that weren’t true, Ms. Hanan could not have so perfectly “nailed” the account of hearing barriers that abound in places that seem to have been designed to drive diners out of their minds, and out of the eating facility ASAP. Shame on restauranteurs who are terribly
    insensitive to the throngs of us who have hearing challenges. I sing the praises of those who care enough to provide conversation-friendly accoustics.

    Once I find a place that (due to thoughtful accoustics) affords the opportunity to carry on a dining table conversation with 1, 2, 3, or 4 other people, I return time and again.

    Jerry McCoy

  3. Gael, you never cease to amaze me with your humours and insightful comments about issues that affect those of us with hearing loss. I’ve left restaurants who refused to turn down the background music because “it would negatively affect their ambience” (their words, not mine). While we face an uphill battle for better access, it is voices like yours that speaks for us and will hopefully make some people think a bit about creating better access, but more importantly, be motivated to actually do something about it. Oh, and if you ever do open that accessible restaurant, I’ll be one of the first in line, even if I do have to come from Newfoundland and Labrador. Bye for now!

  4. I refuse to eat in restaurants that taunt me with a wall sign that says: Not loud enough? Join us on free Chicken Wing Thursdays and too loud?? Wear earplugs. How rude and insensitive… and certainly not funny.

    1. Gael Hannan Author

      Amazing! Next time you see a sign like that, Juliette, could you take a photo and send it? With a stepson in the NHL, I go to a few games, and when the jumbotron exhorts the crowd to “Make Some Noise!”, I’m the one with my hands clapped over my ears.

  5. If anyone out there finds one of these let me know. I’m in. Thanks for the article Gael

  6. Gail if you ever can find a restaurant like that let me know
    where it is and I will make it my business to give them my
    business. Also if you can find someone to open such an
    eating establishment Montreal please let me know and I
    will be at the head of the line whenever I go out to eat and
    when you are in Montreal I will surely be pleased to take you there.

    Keep well my very good friend and keep up the good work.

    Lou Brock

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