In the Dark

Last night, I had a truly unique dining experience, Helena and I ate a meal in complete pitch darkness; it was actually a little unnerving. Dans Le Noir is a restaurant that allows you to completely re-evaluate your notion of a dining experience. You are guided and waited by a blind staff, and basically are experiencing what it would be like to be blind; dependent on your sense of smell, taste, and touch to experience your meal.

We entered into a pitch-dark room with our hands on the left shoulder of the person in front of us. Within seconds my eyes were straining to acclimate to my new environment, but they never really did, not even after a couple of hours. It’s amazing how once you loose your sense of sight you start to question everything around you, and become very dependent on your sense of hearing and touch. I sat down at the table and instantly started touching everything around me, and asking for Helena (after all, I needed to make sure they sat me in front of the right person – otherwise, that could’ve been awkward!).

At first, I wasn’t sure what I got myself into … I didn’t really enjoy not being able to see anything. It took me a couple minutes and some wine to get comfortable and it was definitely comforting knowing that I had a good friend sitting across from me. We were seated at communal tables, and part of the experience I’ve been told, is to speak with your neighbors not knowing who they are or what they look like, but we are in Paris and not London or NYC, so my attempts to speak with our dinner partners were not well received. I didn’t even need my sight to see the expression of the couples sitting next to us when we tried to speak with them … I have lived here for over a year, so the returned silence was understood, although, it was fun to listen to everyone trying to guess what they were eating. By the end of the meal, Helena and I were talking and laughing and telling stories as if we were in a room all by ourselves.

Table manners definitely went down the drain, when each course came, we were completely fondling all of our food trying to figure out what everything was before we tried it, and using a knife was pretty impossible. My mother would have been so ashamed if she were watching a video of us eat. We also noticed that we had horrible posture as we were leaning into the table while we ate, and I’m proud to report that we walked away without any stains :)

I have to give props to Helena for being a good sport, putting it nicely, she’s a little bit of a picky eater (she only eats chicken and cow), so she lied about having some allergies to avoid anything that swims, and then avoided anything that was animal texture to ensure she wasn’t eating any duck, veal, lamb or rabbit.

The food was good, but I definitely think something is lost without the visual experience. I won’t reveal our menu, as they keep the same menu for a couple of months at a time and wouldn’t want to wreck it for anyone, but there’s nothing to worry about as you won’t be eating anything bizarre, strange or out of the ordinary. I highly recommend that at least once in your life you experience dining in complete darkness. Dans Le Noir is located in Paris, London, Kiev, Saint-Petersburg, Barcelona and NYC, but there are other similar type restaurant that increase public awareness about blindness in Zurich, Bale, Koln, Frankfurt, Berlin, and Montreal, etc …