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Dans Le Noir?
Oct. 9th, 2006 11:08 amThe name of the restaurant, punctuation and all, is Dans Le Noir?, to which the answer is unequivocally “Oui”. You eat in pitch darkness. No light enters the dining area at all, unless some numpty behind you switches his mobile on to check his messages and inadvertently lights up the whole place, to general boos and catcalls and a very specific “Will you fuck off with your mobile phone?” from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
offensive_mango.
An Independent review said the restaurant “neatly inverts the relationship between the blind and the sighted”, and it does exactly that. The waiters are blind, and you are entirely in their hands. Their presence is comforting in an otherwise massively disorienting environment. After they have led you to your table and guided your hands to everything you’ll need, you’re immersed in the sounds of a busy restaurant but can see precisely nothing. Finding your way around your plate (which seems about five times its actual size) becomes an adventure in itself, especially if you have opted for the “surprise menu” and have no idea what you’re about to be presented with: “Is this couscous? This is couscous, right?” (No. It turned out to be “lentilles”, which appears to be code for couscous.) They show you the menu afterwards so you can see what you’ve been eating. We had identified about half of it, which apparently isn’t bad going.
Dans Le Noir?, yesterday
The idea is to make you focus on your food and experience the tastes anew, but the effect goes far deeper than that. One of my uncles has been blind for years, and Saturday night was the closest thing I have ever experienced to how he has lived much of his adult life. Nothing quite prepares you for that kind of immersion.offensive_mango said that aspect reminded her of the mild panic she experienced on her first scuba dive. When some friends of mine went to Dans Le Noir? a few weeks ago, one of their number unexpectedly had a panic attack as soon as he was in the dark room and had to go home. That didn’t happen to me; I was mostly fine with it, although I was aware that at a very deep level there was a small part of me that needed to be told that everything was all right. I guess that’s entirely natural—caves, firelight, sabre-tooth tigers and all that. (Emerging bewildered into the light turns out to be just as disorienting. You'll need a gentle sit-down for a few minutes to come to terms with it.)
Actually, my friends’ experience was disappointing. Some of the orders were wrong, the (sighted) staff failed to find them in the (lit) bar beforehand, and there was a general level of Soviet-style incompetence they failed to find amusing. Several online reviews sang the same song. However, this was one of the aspects of the place that piqued my curiosity. To have come up with this extraordinary gimmick for a restaurant was already quite bold, but then to execute it badly seemed entirely perverse. Those all seem to have been teething problems, though—the place has only been open for a couple of months—because the service and the food were excellent. It was pricey (although you could probably come in under £40 a head if you just opted for two courses and nixed the wine), but we thought it was worth it.
The restaurant’s website arguably tries a little too hard in its pitch. “How many times have you ever had the chance to talk to people without any preconception that sight implies?” it demands. Um, every time I’ve used the phone? But that’s a footling quibble: now that the place seems to have found its footing, I cheerfully recommend it.
offensive_mango. An Independent review said the restaurant “neatly inverts the relationship between the blind and the sighted”, and it does exactly that. The waiters are blind, and you are entirely in their hands. Their presence is comforting in an otherwise massively disorienting environment. After they have led you to your table and guided your hands to everything you’ll need, you’re immersed in the sounds of a busy restaurant but can see precisely nothing. Finding your way around your plate (which seems about five times its actual size) becomes an adventure in itself, especially if you have opted for the “surprise menu” and have no idea what you’re about to be presented with: “Is this couscous? This is couscous, right?” (No. It turned out to be “lentilles”, which appears to be code for couscous.) They show you the menu afterwards so you can see what you’ve been eating. We had identified about half of it, which apparently isn’t bad going.
Dans Le Noir?, yesterday
The idea is to make you focus on your food and experience the tastes anew, but the effect goes far deeper than that. One of my uncles has been blind for years, and Saturday night was the closest thing I have ever experienced to how he has lived much of his adult life. Nothing quite prepares you for that kind of immersion.
offensive_mango said that aspect reminded her of the mild panic she experienced on her first scuba dive. When some friends of mine went to Dans Le Noir? a few weeks ago, one of their number unexpectedly had a panic attack as soon as he was in the dark room and had to go home. That didn’t happen to me; I was mostly fine with it, although I was aware that at a very deep level there was a small part of me that needed to be told that everything was all right. I guess that’s entirely natural—caves, firelight, sabre-tooth tigers and all that. (Emerging bewildered into the light turns out to be just as disorienting. You'll need a gentle sit-down for a few minutes to come to terms with it.)Actually, my friends’ experience was disappointing. Some of the orders were wrong, the (sighted) staff failed to find them in the (lit) bar beforehand, and there was a general level of Soviet-style incompetence they failed to find amusing. Several online reviews sang the same song. However, this was one of the aspects of the place that piqued my curiosity. To have come up with this extraordinary gimmick for a restaurant was already quite bold, but then to execute it badly seemed entirely perverse. Those all seem to have been teething problems, though—the place has only been open for a couple of months—because the service and the food were excellent. It was pricey (although you could probably come in under £40 a head if you just opted for two courses and nixed the wine), but we thought it was worth it.
The restaurant’s website arguably tries a little too hard in its pitch. “How many times have you ever had the chance to talk to people without any preconception that sight implies?” it demands. Um, every time I’ve used the phone? But that’s a footling quibble: now that the place seems to have found its footing, I cheerfully recommend it.
Never leave your subconscious in charge of wordplay. I woke up the other day and caught the tail-end of a dream I was having, in which I had tried to construct some elaborate joke that played with the phrase “Ban this sick filth”. My subconscious seemed bizarrely pleased with the result, although my own incredulity increased the more I contemplated the phrase I was left looking at in my mind’s eye. 
