deafeningly loud restaurants

Dined recently at Banana Blossom, the Thai place in old Gretna. Food was tasty....but the noise level on a Friday night at 7 pm was ridiculous. The dining room is all hard surfaces: bare floors, bare tables, painted brick walls, big windows with minimal mesh roller shades. It was loud but at the edge of bearable, then a party of four was seated at the next table: ugh. Two couples with booming voiced men and cackle-laughing women.

Why oh why don't restaurants use sound-dampening materials on walls or in window coverings? I liked the food enough to regularly go there, but the noise level means I'll have to do it at weird, off peak hours when the place is half-empty.