26 th November 2011
"DON'T wear white," my husband said to me in an unusually serious manner when he surprised me with reservations for dinner. This would be interesting, I thought. What's up with the dress code for this restaurant?
We were in London for our summer vacation as we do every year. Although I don't live in the city anymore, I grew up here and thought I knew most of the best date restaurants it has to offer. Apparently not, as my husband was taking me to Dans Le
Noir? (French for "In The Dark?"). And it would prove to be an extraordinary experience which questioned sight and its predominance in our lives, especially when it comes to food.
When we got to the restaurant in the trendy area of Farringdon, we were asked to stow away our personal belongings in lockers placed in the foyer. (Lockers in a fine-dining restaurant? I had never heard anything more preposterous!) Thereafter we were asked to make the all-important decision of the evening - our menu. There was the green menu for vegetarian, the blue menu for seafood, red for meat or the white for surprise.
The dishes on the French-inspired menus were, of course, not revealed to us.
Blind tasting
Not knowing what to expect anymore, my dinner proceedings got stranger: We were introduced to a blind (yes, blind, not blindfolded) gentleman who would be our server that evening. As we later discovered, all the servers at the restaurant were blind. We were warned that since the dining hall inside was going to be pitch dark, we should allow our server to lead us to our seats. It was ironic that the blind were going to be our eyes that evening.
We formed a conga line and entered. It was so dark I couldn't see my own hands in front of my face. With our vision gone, hearing was certainly heightened. I could hear great laughter and merriment, it was as if there were a thousand people were inside. Was the restaurant that huge? My senses were entirely thrown off.
I felt a little more comfortable with my new surroundings when I was seated. I realised that there were other people seated at our table but before I could strike up a conversation with those who joined us in this very surreal experience, our server began arriving with our first course and drinks.
I could hear him moving with ease and precision but couldn't fathom how he managed to hold these plates heaped with food and breeze through the service - from placing the cutlery in our hands to pouring wine into the glasses - sight impaired.
The entire experience was more amazing and confounding as I could, with my new super-hearing powers, distinctly hear servers whizzing past, serving the other guests, refilling, taking food orders and escorting guests in and out of the dining room. Not once did I hear a clamour, a crash or even a guest complaining.

All my inhibitions shed in the dark, I bid my knife and fork adieu. It was way too hard to try to use them to pick the food. So yes, I used my hands. It became a guessing game of what I was eating: Was I tasting shrimp or crab? I learnt perhaps I shouldn't have opted for seafood. Since I couldn't see, the food smelled fishier, seemed more pungent, and the textures slimy and eerie. Perhaps the vegetarian menu would be less daunting under these circumstances.
While I was grappling with my food, my husband was struggling with cutting into his steak. I feared for the worst. The last thing that I wanted was a trip to the emergency room.
Food for thought
By a stroke of luck, we remained accident free. But not incident-free. We could hear each other mutter "oops", "oh no!" every few minutes as we'd probably spilt something.
I shudder to think about what the table cloth must look like. The icing on the cake was, quite literally, the dessert which arrived towards the end of our meal. I devoured it. How could anybody go wrong with this wonderfully soft and the oh-so-sweet smelling treat although I had no idea what I was eating.
When our server felt that our food was finished, he escorted us out of the dining hall.
Not surprisingly, we looked like we had emerged from a food fight.
We were asked to guess what we had eaten. Surprisingly, I was right on most accounts.
But what caught me by surprise was that I had wolfed down the crab which I would ordinarily never have eaten. My husband went quiet after discovering he had gobbled down pigeon and calf liver, something he never would have indulged in.
I finally understood what Dans Le Noir was about. First opened in Paris in 2004, with the support of the Paul Guinot Foundation for Blind People, the restaurant changed my perception of what it was like to eat and socialise without sight. I could taste fuller, appreciate the care of the service and behave with less inhibitions. And I truly learnt that evening the disabled were the able. They were our guides. It was an emotional realisation and heartening to learn that the restaurant donates 10 per cent of all profits to several chairities, including those that work with the visually impaired.
We walked out of Dans Le Noir with memories of an unforgettable dining experience. I've never felt more grateful for a holiday meal which made me see. I had been in the dark for too long, taking for granted how lucky I was for having all five senses intact.
Mandira Rai