mako Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > entirely reasonable that a family should be eating > at that time, but equally reasonable for you to > have a word if they were too loud, the same as you > presumably would if adults were too loud, which is > fairly common in a curry house. The time is the > key for me as if i was in a restaurant at 5pm with > my family I would hope for other diners to tone > down their language for example, however if i was > in a pub with my family at 8.30pm or later then i > would consider it our choice to be in an > environment where people may freely use expletives > so that would be fair enough. Exactly right. I guess the only difference is that the OP seemed to think it was the waiter's / restaurant's responsibility to assess the level of noise and act on behalf of other diners - which I would agree with if it was extreme, but it seems from the conversation with the waiter afterwards that the waiter had not noticed, so it may have been debatable whether the noise was disruptive in this case.