O’Noir – Dining in the Dark

Whilst in Montreal we were lucky enough to enjoy a sensory dinner like I have never experienced before. Dining at O’Noir is a unique culinary experience that offers an interesting and enjoyable insight into the daily lives of vision impaired people.

Our Intrepid tour leader Cara, fellow travellers Beth and Aoife and myself were all a little apprehensive before we went into the restaurant. Standing in the bar area waiting to meet our waitress we were not sure what exactly we were walking into.

Before entering the restaurant, we first had to choose our menu. Surprise dishes were available for each course and all options sounded delicious, so we were keen to begin. We were introduced to our waitress, Griselda, whom we learnt had 5% vision and had been working at O’Noir for eight years. Forming a train, one person behind the next with our left hand on the person in front’s shoulder, Griselda lead us into the restaurant.

I knew it was going to be dark but I didn’t quite anticipate the enveloping darkness that surrounded us. Walking through what you know is a restaurant with tables, chairs, waitstaff, drinks, food and other diners that you can hear dining around you in the total darkness, really overwhelmed initially. With no option but to trust Griselda and each other, we walked to our table. Sitting and feeling with our fingers was really funny and new. I now have an understanding of what vision impaired people mean when they talk about ‘seeing’ with their hands. I found that I was exploring the table, cutlery, glasses and surroundings with my fingertips trying to visualise how everything looked.

Our first challenge was the bread roll delivery. Locating a knife and butter, cutting, buttering a roll and then eating it, all in total darkness, was much more of a challenge than expected. Some of us ate bread with massive clumps of butter and some with no butter at all. It was great that there were four of us to talk and laugh about our difficulties.

Dinner was served and the food was delicious, but basically invisible. Today I can’t tell you what it looked like. I can’t tell you if the meal was nicely presented, if the wine was a light or dark red, even what the colour of the plates were, and I have doubts that the tableware matched. But I can tell you that the food was delicious. That I had a large swordfish steak that covered two thirds of my plate on the left side and a salad of finely sliced cucumber that would have been made with a peeler, with soy beans dressed in a sweet but slightly tart lime dressing.

Whilst eating we discussed how the food smelled, described it’s texture, laughed at how we found ourselves leaning down towards our plates because we weren’t sure if the fork could reach our mouths without losing food.

Between courses I found our conversation naturally shifted from the strange darkness and circumstance surrounding us to regular dinner discussion. The total darkness became quite comfortable and did not have the claustrophobic feeling that I had feared. We discussed interesting things relating to the darkness. We were tired and could easily fall asleep at the table as we were dining at 10pm and wondered if we would have that same sleepy feeling if we had instead had lunch, dining in the middle of the day.

During our discussion, I found that I had closed my eyes without realising, only becoming aware of it when Griselda came up next to me with our next course. I’m thrilled that I was able to enjoy such a unique dining experience and push my senses further. Everything I knew as ‘normal’ was altered in very stark and yet also very subtle ways.