The Handbook Reviews: Pitch-black Dining At Dans Le Noir?
There is a point while dining in Dans Le Noir? – the infamous dine-in-the-dark restaurant in Farringdon – when you almost forget you’re eating in total darkness. Your eyes might never adjust, but the rest of your senses do, and you settle into a rhythm. However, something, inevitably, happens – spilled water, a surprise vegetable on your plate, wondering how you are going to make it to the bathroom – that sharply reminds you that you’ve never quite dined like this before.
What sets it apart
The concept began in Paris in 2004, and has since spread to London, Barcelona, New York, Melbourne, Nairobi and the filmography of Richard Curtis. Designed as part-meal, part-sensory experiment, it strives to show addition through absence.
You know how, when you’re driving somewhere new and apprehensive of getting lost, you have to switch off the music so that you can see better? It’s the same idea: By eliminating your sight, your taste buds should now be able to get to work without prejudice or expectation.
Our experience
It is a baffling and hugely entertaining ordeal. Despite knowing what was in store, I was still curious to see (or, I guess, sense) how it actually worked in practice. As we were led – slowly, deliberately, forming a sort of human train via hands-on-shoulders – to our table, there were two very large crashes of something dropped, and a general air of chaos. I thought to myself “Oh, this is how it works. It’s just total anarchy”.
After that however, it mellowed down into something approaching normality. Turns out, it’s actually not that hard to pour water in the dark, once you spend about five minutes making sure the bottle and glass have joined up, and tipping it at such a conservative angle that the liquid is coming out as slowly as if it was hot sticky tar.
After a while, all you can think of is how impressive an operation it is. The wait staff is all blind or visually impaired, and yet buzz around the tables expertly.
The second thing you notice – a phenomenon confirmed by our waiter, Michael – is just how loud it is. As you strive to compensate for the loss of vision, you speak louder. It’s also more difficult to hold a conversation without the usual social and visual cues, like lying in bed and constantly wondering if your partner has drifted off when they don’t respond immediately.
What we ordered
It’s not often – or ever, really – you have to provide a spoiler warning when reviewing a meal. We ordered the surprise menu, of which part of the fun was trying to guess what you were eating as much as experiencing how your taste buds change when robbed of any sort of prior warning. If you want to go in blind (recommended), and plan on choosing the pescatarian surprise menu, please skip to the conclusion.
Ultimately, and sort of bizarrely, I found myself just closing my eyes throughout most of the meal. This was not a deliberate tactic, more a natural response, as if they recognised their services would not be needed for the evening and decided to just take it off.
For our main, we were given a Thai Green Noodle Curry, with a filet of cod on the side. Ideally, you would want to consume this holistically, spearing the cod whilst sweeping up some sauce and noodles at the same time. Instead, I proceeded to devour the entire noodle section in a frenzy of attempted identification, only discovering the fish at the end.
I brought my friend who, to her credit, had a much sharper tongue than mine, so much so she even picked up a subtle hint of passion fruit in the dessert. Meanwhile I was desperately (and erroneously) holding on to the belief that what I was eating was a chocolate mousse – it was a vanilla millefeuille, albeit with pieces of chocolate flecked throughout, which I’m clinging onto as an excuse for why my own tongue was led astray.
Verdict
The experience is built upon the obvious strength of its concept. By the end of the meal, such was our excitement to find out exactly what we had eaten, we even passed on a final drink – a truly drastic act that itself should reveal just how unique an experience it is. Would you visit twice? You get the sense it wouldn’t be half as fun second time round. But the shelf life of the novelty concept comfortably lasts through to the end of the meal. The food is good, but reviewing it traditionally feels a bit like if you were to review a new restaurant set up on a flight from London to Tokyo. Thank you for the meal, but I’m here to get to Japan.
Dans le noir?
69-73 St John St, London EC1M 4NJ
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