Backstory: Dining in the dark

If you're ever considering eating a three-course meal in pitch darkness, a word of caution: choose your dining companion carefully. For even a usually restrained, well-behaved individual can morph into someone quite different when shut inside a black box for dinner for several hours, and when they think no one's watching.

It's a grim, cold Saturday night, and the venue is Dans Le Noir, London's first dining-in-the-dark destination, where dishes are consumed inside a sealed dark room, and where, no matter how much you strain, you can't make out so much as the outline of your napkin. Tonight, it's a surprise menu and communal tables.

In the lighted lobby, conspicuous signs instruct that diners must remain seated to avoid collisions, and that no sources of light are allowed: no lighters, cellphones, digital watches, nor cameras. My husband already looks anxious: No cellphone for three hours? Surreptitiously, he switches his phone to silent mode, and slips it in a pocket. Who's going to know? After all, he reminds me, the waiters are blind.

Blind waiters are what makes Dans Le Noir unique among dining-in-the-dark experiences across the globe. Edouard de Broglie, their founder, explains that he first heard of the concept through an organization for the blind that had been arranging "dark dining" events in Europe since the mid-1980s, to raise awareness on blindness.

Mr. de Broglie suggested it open a restaurant and offered to invest. In 2004, Dans Le Noir was launched in Paris to rave reviews. The London branch opened in March, and Moscow's opens this month.

"It's interesting and surreal," de Broglie says of the sheer novelty that attracts customers. "People wonder, 'What's that taste? Does it taste good? Do I enjoy this?' Our goal is to fill people with questions, as well as with dinner."

The atmosphere, he adds, "removes preconceptions about your dining companions. You talk to people you usually wouldn't, or experience people you already know in a different way. It's a very convivial and open-minded experience."

Moreover, it's awakening, giving a different perspective on disability, de Broglie says. "It's magic. You reverse everything. The blind become your eyes for a few hours. You might be used to helping blind people across the road, but you're not necessarily prepared for the blind to help you."

Our waiter is Roberto Rebecchi, who began losing his sight in 1989, and was registered as blind in 1993. With a background in the restaurant business, he was sure that he'd never work "on the floor" again. But when he heard that Dans Le Noir was setting up in London, he recalls, "I couldn't believe my eyes!"

With the evening's 60 diners assembled, names are called, and we form a line with our right hands placed on the shoulders of the diners in front. Then off we sashay through a heavy black curtain, along an increasingly dimly lit corridor, and into pure, unadulterated darkness. It's disorienting to be suddenly 100 percent sightless, and Mr. Rebecchi asks us to stand still. Each diner is deftly escorted to a seat. I giggle nervously as the shoulder to which I've been clinging dematerializes and I'm left stranded in limbo.

Rebecchi explains the geography of the table: "To your left you'll find the water glass. In the middle, one for wine. And to your right, an amuse bouche: chilled gazpacho soup in a glass."

I gingerly reach forward to locate the glasses. And, immediately, my dining companion commits Faux Pas No. 1: There's a soft clunk and the unpleasant sensation of something cold spreading across my leg. "Oops!" comes a familiar voice from the darkness. I mop gazpacho from my lap.

Thus, dinner is off to a flying start.

Page: 1 | 2