Last Thursday, the girls and I went to eat at "Dans Le Noir." Translated literally as "In the Dark," I had read about this restaurant's German equivalent a few years ago and had never forgotten about it. The LongIslander, out on visit from, yes, Long Island, proposed we go to the Parisian version after reading an article on it in People.
The idea of both the German and French restaurants is simple and the same: eat in pitch darkness. Execution? Not so straightforward.
We arrived at the restaurant and checked out the menu. We ordered with the guy at the door and then stood around and waited. My cohorts began getting a bit nervous before we walked in, but I was just giggly. When our name was called, we stepped up, and then a big, black, blind man walked out from behind the curtain.
"Ladies," said the man who had taken our order, "This is Jean-Claude, otherwise known to us as Barry White."
"Hello ladies," Jean-Claude's deep, deep voice pitched in.
"Jean-Claude is going to be your waiter this evening, so if you need anything, just call out his name. If you have to go to the bathroom, do not get up. Call for Jean-Claude and he'll take you there. Now, Jean-Claude, you have three diners here this evening. One got an appetizer and main course, and two got a main course with dessert. There's a bottle of ros� that goes with the order."
Jean-Claude had turned his ear towards the waiter to register the words in what must be a pretty well-organized mental waiter pad, and then nodded. "Ok. Are you ladies ready? Form a line behind me, each person with their hands on the person in front's shoulders. And we're off."
We walked through the curtain and then through another one. We turned around a corner or two and suddenly it was pitch black. I mean, truly, no light whatsoever. Being guided by Jean-Claude, we found our table.
"Here's one seat," he said, and guided each of us individually to our spots. Feeling out the table and chairs, we managed to sit down. It took some getting-our-bearings time, but we all called out to one another, felt for each other's faces, and scooted our chairs up to the table at the proper distance.
Eating in the dark is a great experience, and I recommend it to anybody who has a theme restaurant like this in their area. It takes a few minutes to get comfortable. And, of course, have to get a bit more intimidate with your fellow diners than usual: the girls and I would say, "Ok, hold out your hand. Alright, I've got it. Now, I'm going to guide your hand towards my glass. There you go. Now pour." and so on. So there was a lot of touching. Which, I suppose, could make for a pretty hot date with the right type of person. In our case, it just made for an entertaining meal.
Mainly, though, the experience got me wondering about blind people. For example, at one point, TheLongIslander sort of stretched her back away from us for a second. "LongIslander!" I called out, "Where are you going?" I just felt her presence leaving, and without realizing it, had reacted to that feeling. "Nowhere," she said, "I'm just stretching my back." I started wondering how much of what I had sensed was based on hearing, and how much was just based on feeling her leaving our little zone. Do blind people sense vibes better than seeing people, for example?
Another example: at one point, Jean-Claude made a sort of sexy comment to me because I had ordered a chocolate dessert. I laughed, because it was funny, but how could he know that I would take that sort of comment well? I cannot imagine a stuffy French woman laughing it off. Could he tell just by how I said, "Me," when he asked who ordered the fish, or was it something else? Seeing people generally use visual clues to make those sorts of judgements, but Jean-Claude knew nothing of me other than that I was American and that I had ordered fish and cake. Intersting, I thought.
Food eating was obviously more complicated, and naturally things like sharing food and cutting with a knife and fork took on entirely new levels of difficulty. But after about twenty minutes in the restaurant, I found the darkness comforting and I didn't really ever want to leave. I think we stayed about two and a half hours. I left, eventually, of course, but with an entirely new appreciation for how complicated eating a meal must be for blind people in a seeing world. It must be extremely intense at times.
The only snare in our soir�e was the table next to us. The people there got drunk and obnoxious and used the darkness to be rather crude. At one point, Kathypath called them on it. It was a good thing. I guess people are more willing to be both a bit more rude and a bit more confrontational than usual when nobody knows who's responsible.
Also, when in pitch darkness, you see red. I was told it was that you're seeing the blood vessels in your eyes, but I found it pretty odd.
And one more note: leaving was really, really painful on the eyes. It took at least five minutes to recover.
And I met a great seeing-eye-dog on the way out, who really wanted to be my friend, and me his.
That sounds like a really amazing experience. I wonder though, what do blind people think of it? Would they appreciate it as a chance to show seeing people what it's like for them, or find it insulting to have their impairment used in a gimmicky way?
wow...i didn't know they had one of those restaurants in paris...i've heard of one in NY...maybe i'll have to make a trip to paris soon to check it out...i doubt they have one here in lille...was it expensive???
Lottie - Gimmicky... yeah, I can see that. Then again, I think one of the cool parts of the restaurant is that it's the blind people running the show. It's one of the few places for them to work where their blindness is an asset. It would be interesting to have their opinion on it.
Natalie - It was more expensive than your average restaurant, but not overly so. I think we paid 40 euros/person, with us each getting either entr�e+plat or plat+dessert. We also got two bottles of wine with it (amongst three people), which probably tipped us a little over the edge. I'd say probably 35 euros/person for a full meal, which is pretty reasonable by Parisian standards.
Sounds pretty cool. I'd love to go to a place like that- maybe they'll make it into a chain? ;)