To the Editor:

Re “Noisy Restaurant? What’s the Problem?,” by Pete Wells (Critic’s Notebook, Jan. 22):

I am the benighted editor who many years ago asked The Times’s food critics to assess, among other things, the noise level in reviewed restaurants.

I discovered that I and a few others past middle age no longer enjoyed shouting over their entree and that conversation, and some distance from the conversation at neighboring tables, contributed mightily to the enjoyment of the finest dishes.

That your current critic prefers distracting noise and digests better in a din is understandable; he does not pay for his nightly ventures out and in fact is paid for obsessive concentration on the dishes before him. He may be so preoccupied that it never occurs to him that some folks incur the cost of restaurants because they want to savor the chatter of friends and hear the sound of breaking bread.

A good critic is also a reporter, and he is not required to be deaf to the concerns of other diners.