Dining in the dark

It's long after my birthday--nearly a month in fact--but we finally made it out to my birthday dinner. This year, instead of going with predictably scrumptious (say, L'Express, or Au Pied de Cochon, or Toqué), I decided to go with damn, that's novel. O.Noir ("It's better in the dark!") offers diners the novel experience of dining in utter darkness.

The b-day dinner crew gets ready to raise a ruckus.

When you enter the restaurant, you find yourself in a small foyer, where you read the menu, place your order, and wait for your waiter to guide your party to your table. The menu always features a "surprise" dish for each course. Your waiter--the entire service staff is blind--leads you to your table, and then... it gets interesting.

I wrote a review of the experience for my friend EP, which I think pretty well captures the experience of the evening:

O.Noir was at once a thrilling and a disappointing experience. Our party included me, two MBAs (my wife being one of them), two architects, and a psychologist. We talked a great deal about the design of the space, the design of the experience, and the experience's business proposition.

The bottom line (at least for this particular dine-in-the-dark restaurant--there are others): the food was completely unremarkable in both taste and texture. We had hoped for intense odors, unexpected shapes and textures, and so forth. The design of the space was disappointing in that it didn't seem to harbor any serious ambitions to capitalize on the fact that we couldn't see. Why not playful changes in flooring and wall textures. And the design of the objects we used (plates, glasses, forks, chairs, etc.) was also dull, dull, dull. The flatware could have been shaped differently; the glasses heavier in the base to prevent spills; the chairs at different heights; etc. etc. It was also very, very loud. High ceilings, hard surfaces, and no sound mitigation strategies.

BUT... the possibilities were extremely exciting. Our culture is so focused on vision that we often forget the importance of our other senses. During dinner, we talked about how thoughtful, creative design could have provided a magnificently rich experience. Someone--I can't remember who--suggested "eating gloves," which would be a fantastic design challenge.

As it was, cutting food was ridiculously difficult, so most of us ended up eating with our hands. We speculated that applying the east Asian principle of knifeless eating (all cutting done in the kitchen) might have been appropriate. We talked about adopting a culinary approach more sensitive to senses other than sight: using more aromatic seasonings (e.g., lavender, cumin, and mint), ingredients and dishes which have a auditory component (fizzy water, breads that need tearing, crunchy appetizers, etc.), and texturally engaging finger foods. Out impression was that management wasn't fully engaging the possibilities--for the interior designers and the chef, it was basically just a gimmick.

In all, we essentially paid $55 a head to eat mediocre food during a power outage. A novel experience which provides great grist for a stimulating conversation about innovation and design, but not somewhere I'd spend money a second time.

Hope your birthday dinner causes as much thinking as mine did!