A Blind Mans Dinner

Dinner at Dans Le Noir

For my Glen’s birthday Kieran surprised him with dinner at Dans Le Noir which is a restaurant where you eat completely in the dark. You cannot see your meal or anything for that fact. You get a choice of, selecting a meal you know, or choose a surprise meal. There are 3 surprise meals to choose from. These are the green (vegetarian), red (meat) and white (anything fish, veggie, meat). Kieran chose the meat (red) and Glen chose the anything (or white). Along with the birthday meal we had surprise drinks. We took our champagne in the waiting area before our waiter came to seat us. The interesting thing about the wait staff is that they are all blind.

They were served by Karl (an Australian oddly enough from the central coast NSW). Entering the dinning area through double curtains to lock out all light they had to walk close together with hands on shoulders in a line. Lead to their seats and told where everything was, having a feel around to make sure they had it correctly located. Before going in we had to remove anything shiny or with a light feature, there went the watches and phones into a locker.

We were given our starters and not knowing what the food we were eating was we found it interesting to try and guess. Kieran started telling Glen what she had got and Glen was thinking he had the same meal, yes there was a salad but the meats were completely different. The starters were Pigeon breast salad for Kieran and a lobster and caviar salad for Glen. They both failed in guessing their starters. Next came the main meal, the meat was all severed pre cut so you could use the knife and fork if you wanted but it was not necessary to use them. Glen tried as best he could to remain civilised and use the cutlery while Kieran tucked straight in with fingers. Having guessed they were eating similar meals. Only Kieran chose correctly in her guess of steak. She had wild boar and sirloin steak. While Glen thought he also had steak turned out to be Kangaroo and Zebra. If you have any problems eating Zebra don’t worry it clearly tastes like steak but then again Glen thought lobster was chicken (by persuasion of the mind). Lastly was the dessert both had the same meal this time and both thought it was something like a peach. It turned out to be dates. Alas they will never make it on master chef for tasting food.

It was a wonderful experience and worth the money. To experience a meal as a blind person and to actually think about your food and knowing where you placed that glass of water or even pouring that glass!