This bright red sign beckons to motorists driving down Bethlehem Pike in either direction.

by Len Lear

In late August my wife, sister-in-law, niece and I went to Butcher & Singer, a beautiful and very pricey Stephen Starr restaurant at 15th and Walnut Streets, for a celebratory dinner in honor of the birthdays of my wife and sister-in-law. (They’re twins.)

The food, drinks, service and surroundings were almost all A+, but there was just one joker in the deck; the din was unbearable. It was so loud that it was very difficult to carry on a conversation. I had to bend way over to hear my niece, who was sitting right next to me. My wife, who was sitting across from my niece, could not hear her at all.

This is not the first time we have confronted this issue during an otherwise wonderful dinner, of course. Are we the only ones who have experienced this uncomfortable phenomenon? Since studies show that our hearing is more impacted by loud noise as we get older, I know we are not alone. But many restaurateurs, like Starr, actually prefer to have deafening noise in their dining rooms because they believe the “buzz” is a magnet for customers, especially younger ones (and they are probably right).

Thankfully, Fernando Sauri is not one of them. Fernando, 52, is the owner of Tamarindo’s, a BYOB Mexican restaurant he opened late in 2015 at 726 Bethlehem Pike in Flourtown. (Prior to that he owned Tamarindo’s for 16 years in a small strip mall just past the Broad Axe Tavern on Skippack Pike.)

Tamarindo’s has a small dining room in the front of the building and a much larger one in the rear. There are 120 seats overall inside and 54 more on an outdoor patio. Up until recently the tables in the large room were right up against each other, and when the room was beehive busy, the din was not pleasant, not to mention that diners were unintentionally listening to the conversations at adjacent tables, not something you go to a restaurant for.

Fernando admits he had numerous complaints from customers about the noise, so he actually decided to do something about it. So over the last nine months he purchased 24 large acoustic panels at a cost of $300 each and installed them in the large room. In addition, he broke through a wall in the room and had construction workers build a whole new room over six months. It opened on Sept. 12. There are no more tables in the restaurant now than there were before; Fernando just moved many of the tables from the back room into the attractive new room, so there is now much more space between tables everywhere than there was before.

“The noise has gone away,” said Fernando. “In fact, I am still going to put more acoustic panels into the new room just to play it safe. Our job is to make sure the customers have a pleasant experience, and this can’t happen if there is too much noise.” (If other restaurateurs follow Fernando’s lead, I would suggest purchasing lots of stock in any company that makes acoustic tiles.)

This lovely, quiet patio has not gotten much use this summer because of all the rainy days and all the excessively hot days. (Photos by Len Lear)

Sauri is a native of the Yucatán Peninsula in southeastern Mexico, where he managed a restaurant. He came to Wisconsin at age 27 because he had a friend there, but he tired of the cold weather, so he came to Philly because he had gotten married, and this is where his wife was from (now former wife).

“Every woman I have ever had a relationship with could not stand the long hours I have to work — weekends, nights and holidays included — but there is no way around it in the restaurant business,” said Fernando.

After years of working as a server in other restaurants — Tequila’s and The Palm in center city and Marabella’s in Blue Bell — why did Fernando want to open his own restaurant since the hours never seem to end?

“First,” he replied, “I wanted to be my own boss and put into practice all of my experience. I also wanted to show people what real Mexican food is like. Many Americans think it is just tacos, burritos and enchiladas. The fact is, though, that every region of Mexico has its own cuisine that is different from the others.”

(The Yucatán Peninsula, which separates the Gulf of Mexico from the Caribbean Sea, has usually been considered too far and too difficult to reach from the rest of Mexico. Mountainous terrain and very poor roads had kept the Peninsula all to itself.

But having ports along with cultural and commercial ties with Europe, especially France, New Orleans and Cuba, the Yucatecans were influenced in the many aspects of these other countries, such as dress, architecture and cooking, so the dishes from the region have a strong European influence. By the way, Tamarindo’s is named for the tamarind, a fruit common in the Yucatán.

For more information, call 215-619-2390 or visit www.tamarindosrestaurant.com