This will never be my regular haunt. But it’s so odd that it’s still worth a night. I was here for the first time recently when the editor of my old newspaper asked me to write an article on sense-challenging places in Paris. (Editors can be odd too, you know).
So a Sunday night I found myself diving into the dark at the blacked out restaurant 'Dans le Noir'. I had heard about this establishment for months, but hadn’t had the courage to try it.
Now I was picked up by Hamid, a blind waiter, and guided into the dark. And saying dark, I really mean dark. Not only night or twilight, but black, blind nothing.
I heard voices, lots of voices, but was unable to say how many people were in there.
"Don’t rise without calling me, and do not stick out your knife and fork, you’ll just hurt somebody," Hamid warned.
I felt isolated in my blindness, couldn’t even call a friend, as I was forced to leave my mobile phone at the entrance.
Then my other senses started waking up. Suddenly I could smell salt-water fish and ginger from the kitchen, a certain oriental perfume from a woman out there in the dark. And I could hear. Things I never used to notice. Love, grudge, angry spouses and panic from the woman close to me. The dark, I figured out, reveals the voices – and all the unsaid stuff.
Dans le Noir was created five years ago by Edouard de Broglie and Etienne Boisrond, and the two guys had to finance the project themselves, as no investors wanted to put money into a restaurant where the food is invisible and the guests need to call a blind waiter to go to the toilet. But of course – knowing Parisian irrationality – the restaurant was immediately a success and the two guys became frontrunners of a new trend.
I had 'Menu Surprise', and as I couldn’t force myself to put something into the mouth I hadn’t seen, I used my hands. Forgot all my mother’s good education and tuck ten fingers in the sauce to pick up something I later detected as scallops.
"You don’t need to yell", Hamid said somewhere in the dark, and it wasn’t the last time that night he had to shush the guests. Because instinctively, when people can’t see each other, they think they have to speak louder.
"That’s my knee. You are touching my knee, a woman shouted on the edge of hysteria." Apparently somebody took advantage of the obscurity.
I had my main dish. It turned out to be veal with cucumber in coconut milk and ravioli with truffles and parmesan cheese. But, admitted, that I didn’t figure out before later, when the lady in the bar told me. (It’s quite hard to trace a cucumber when it’s disguised in coconut and darkness).
For desert I had bananas flambé with a spiced puff pastry, but half into it I had to leave. Suddenly it just got too much, kind of claustrophobic. So I called for Hamid, who said he was used to women getting unstable in the dark.
Probably I won’t go back. I like seeing too much. But the editor got his story, and yes, I got my senses challenged. Not to talk about my nerves. So try it, if you dare.
Dans le Noir; 51, rue Quincampoix, Paris