The parting of an old friend

It started with reaching home late for dinner. Decided to go out so after much consideration, we decided to have dinner at our old hangout, a restaurant we have been going to for the last 20 years or so.
The regular guys who served us don't seem to be there anymore, and the placed seem staffed by foreign crew. There wasn't, thankfully, a smoking section anymore so we got seated a a fairly nice cubicle. In the need to impress, I guessed, before we could even unwind, the waiter was already there asking to take our order for drinks. To make matters worse, I am hard of hearing, the party across the room was having a reunion of sorts with laughing and screaming kids contributing to the already high ambient noise. The waiter mumbled with a thick foreign accent which very much meant that i could hardly make out what he wanted.
I do believe that as a society our ability to empathise and be considerate is all but gone. Its one thing to gather the famiy at a posh joint; but speaking at the top of their voices, kids allowed to roam free, and uncles snapping photos with an industrial sized flash clearly made my favorite restaurant have much less of what keeps me coming back.
Amongst the good things are that the waiters are always within sight, although they do not smile so much now, they do exercise their level best to keep the glasses filled, and the table cleared. However, I do feel rather uncomfortable that the placemats set for a party of four is not removed when its just the two of us, and when our orders came, we were just served straddling the two place mats on either side of the table. In the midst of it all, the head waiter, standing behind my wife's seat, suddenly slaps the back of the cubicle and walks off, much to our shock. The waiter sees our disgust, and runs off after the guy, and a few short words later brings the man to our table to apologize.
I am sentimental about the place as I enjoyed the friendly waiters who come by with a smile on their faces, genuinely friendly and warming up with a small talk during the good old days. And have always looked forward to the cozy and private ambience, and sadly, this was not there anymore, the last two times i was there.
I may have made the last trip to this place.