Dining in the Dark: Now You Can Eat in a Pitch Black Restaurant where the Waitstaff is Blind
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It is a sense- and mind-altering dining experience that has enjoyed immense popularity in European cities, including the Blinde Kuh (Blind Cow) in Zurich where the concept was first started. And it can now be experienced at Opaque restaurant in Los Angeles, with locations in San Francisco, San Diego, Las Vegas and other U.S. cities planned too: dining in complete blackness.
For an hour or two, you abandon your sense of vision completely while you eat an entire meal served by blind or visually impaired waitstaff in complete darkness. The idea of this intense experience is to enhance your other four senses by "abandoning one that we often take for granted," according to Opaque.
I live in the Chicago area, not L.A., so I am looking forward to the experience on my next Southern California visit OR when a dark dining restaurant opens in Chicago, whichever comes first. But from what I've seen and heard from many others, the dining-in-the-dark experience is indeed mind-altering and not to be missed.
An Earful of Salmon?
When you arrive at Opaque, you are welcomed in a lighted lounge area where you review the menu and select your meal. Your bag, coat and other belongings are also checked in as "you won't need anything but your senses" (in reality this is a security measure.) You are then guided into the darkened dining room where "additional security measures are taken to make your experience both safe and enjoyable."
The blind and visually impaired waitstaff serve your meal as waitstaff in any restaurant do... only you can't see a thing. Therefore, the waitstaff also serve you reassurance; most people are initially and naturally disoriented and nervous. In fact, for at least the first few minutes of eating many admit that they miss their mouths with the food entirely, hit their noses instead of their lips with the rim of their glasses, and other mishaps. I think many people would pay just to watch the diners through night-vision goggles!
Once you get the hand-and-mouth-coordination-in-the-dark thing down -- at least enough to get your mind off stabbing yourself in the eye with the fork -- people say your senses especially focus in two areas:
- You taste the food "differently." One person said you taste the food "more honestly" because you are not relying on how the food looks to influence its taste. This is something people -- though not chefs in restaurants where you can see and certainly not marketers of foods geared to kids -- take for granted all the time. If a food looks appetizing, it registers in our brain that it must be appetizing. And it has to taste awfully bad -- like those NECCO Wafers candies that have always looked good but tasted like chalk pellets -- to convince us otherwise.
But eating in the pitch black is pure nose and tongue tasting, and people have said this allows them to discover new taste nuances they weren't previously aware of -- most but not all necessarily good -- in their food. (Of course it also prompts some to wonder IF what they are tasting is even what they ordered or ???)
- Almost everyone says you engage in conversation with those around you differently. This is something that most first-time diners at Opaque and other dining-in-the-dark restaurants are surprised to discover. At first there is the shared thrill and nervousness of the experience to discuss and perhaps giggle about with those you came with -- perhaps much like wandering into a pitch-black hallway in a haunted house. But when that wears off and you still can't see your dining mates, no matter who they are "conversation is just strange." More uneasy.
In large part this is because gestures, facial expressions and other body language are so key to expression in conversation -- studies have shown they are more important than the tone and inflection of words and even the words themselves! But in the pitch black, they are completely missing.
The blind people I've known have no desire for sympathy, but like all of us for our own challenges, they do appreciate empathy. For most the dining-in-the-dark experience certainly seems to produce that; it is an inevitable hushed conversation at the dark dinner table.
Beyond that, most people say the experience -- though at one or two hours long perhaps only in a nudging sort of way -- prompts a greater awareness of and appreciation for the sense of sight, as well as a greater appreciation for and awareness of the potential of our other senses.
Lygophobics Better Off at Applebee's
Not all agree that the dining-in-the-dark restaurants like Opaque are positive experiences, of course... one person said, "I couldn't stand it. It just made me feel helpless sitting in the dark ... don't go unless you like spending a lot of money on paranoia." But perhaps if he explored his response to the dining-in-the-dark experience in more depth, he would've discovered something quite necessary about himself. Or not.
Meanwhile, soon as one opens here or I find myself in L.A. or another city with a pitch black restaurant, I'm putting on my yard clothes and a face-mask (I'm not the world's most graceful creature, and I'm sure the dark won't help that) and going. Care to join me?
Check Out this Video for More on the
Dining in the Dark Experience...