All readers reading this blog, I assume, knows very well how tunes in the restaurant affect our dining mood. Granted, the music is not the intergal part of the dining package: we don't think of it chiefly, nor secondly or thirdly when we eat out. And savvy dinners know all too well the bottom line is the food. Period.
Yet at some points, we have to admit that a good rhythm does get us into the swing, right? After all, we want good music when we eat. It is part of the senses we can't deny. Choose well, it match perfectly (or better still, spawn) the ambience desired; choose bad, it is a lethal mood killer...
However, it is interesting to see this music-food tango only applys to most of us but not all. A woman called Elizabeth Sulston featured in the latest Nature magazine certainly think otherwise. Gifted with an ability neuroscientists called synaesthesia, a condition in which the brain can links two or more senses together, Sulston can taste the difference in music intervals with her tongue. For example, a minor third tasted salty to her whereas a minor sixth tasted like cream. In case you'd like to have a peek, the full length version of her tasting menu is listed here.
Now, I wonder, can we find Ms. Sulston any tone free of minor third when she eats, say, a dessert buffet? Anyway, if all failed, just play her Prokofiev's Peter and Wolf or Saint-Saens' Carnival of Animals then. That's the best game we ordinary people can offer/associate...
