This year I decided to do my birthday gathering at ONoir, a restaurant downtown Toronto where you eat in the dark and are served by blind waiters. The restaurant is located at 620 Church street. You are not allowed to even use your cellphone light, as it is requested you turn off your cellphone inside so that you do not ruin the experience for anyone else.
Entrance of Restaurant
When you reach the restaurant, you walk down a set of stairs and enter inside. There you are given a menu to decide on your meal. After your group has done deciding on their food your table waiter meets you and takes you inside the dinning room.
Entering the Dark Dinning Room
We were a group of 12 people so he took 6 of us at a time. He told us to put our hand on to each others left shoulder and walk behind one another. As we got inside and the door closed, it was completely pitch black. We could not see a thing, it was actually scary walking to our seats at the table. I thought I was going to bump into something or hit a wall but neither of those things happened.
Sitting Down
When we reached our seats, we had to put our hand on the top of the chair and pull it out properly and somehow sit down. Then after sitting, some of us started feeling the table in front of us and found that there was a plate on the table with a small butter container, along with a knife and fork.
Since we did not know who sat where, we took turns starting at one end of the table and we all said our names. This is how we managed to figure out where everyone was sitting at the table.
Main Course
Our waiter Dave, first served us our beverages we ordered. The way he did this was calling out the name of the drink and whomever ordered it replied and by the sound of the voice he could figure out which part of the table the sound was coming from and then he walked over and tapped the person on their shoulder and gave them their drink. The same procedure happened when we got our main course meal. During our meal, sometimes when we took our fork and thought we picked up something from our plate and put it to our mouth, it was not there. Since we could not see our food while eating, it actually took us longer to eat. ?Since we could not see our food, we relied more on the taste, and smell of the food.
Having a conversation
While eating, its normal for people to talk. In this case, there were 12 of us eating in the dark. Its not easy for everyone to listen to one conversation going on so 2-3 conversations were going on at the same time. What I realized is that if someone wanted to be heard more, the person would increase their volume and talk louder. This was still ok, what got scary is when everyone stopped talking and it was dead silence. Then we realized that our group was the last group left eating. We started hearing faint music in the background on and off and tried to call out for our waiter but he did not come. Then to get the waiters attention that we were done eating, in a normal scenario you just look for your waiter and raise your hand or call him when you see him walk by, but this time there was no seeing so instead, on a count of 3, we all yelled out his name out and then he appeared and asked us what we needed.
Singing
Since it was my birthday dinner, all my friends decided to sing happy birthday to me in the dark. It was really nice but felt a little weird to be sung to in complete darkness without being able to see anyone singing.
Figuring out the Time
By the time we got to dessert we were actually all wondering how long we had been eating, normally you would just look at your watch or phone but in this case we did not have that option in the dark. We went inside at 9pm, so there were guesses for 10:30pm, 10:45pm, and so on. When we finally came out and saw the time it was about 11pm and we actually ate for 2hours.
Taking Pictures
It was akward ?for someone like me who loves taking pictures to not be able to take any pictures during dinner. Therefore I compensated by taking pictures before and after the dinner.
Lessons Learnt
1) In todays culture people are extremely addicted to technology. When people go out with friends or family for dinner they usually have their cellphones with them and from time to time look at the time or send a text message to someone, or check their email and so forth. It is now very difficult to eat without the cellphone distraction. While we ate in the dark we were not allowed to use our cellphones and we instead ended up talking to one another more and spending more time eating and enjoying our meal.
2) We were technically made blind for 2hours while we ate our dinner. Imagine our waiter who is actually blind and has to live his life everyday, 24hours a day without being able to see. You know how important your eyes are but until you are put in a situation where your sense of sight is taken away, you realize even more, how important that sense is and without it how your other senses kick more into action to try to compensate.
In todays lifestyle people spend a lot of time on their cellphones, computers and tv?s either watching videos, playing video games and so forth. There are many more people today that wear glasses then the previous generation. ?All of these things strain out our eyes and we should not do that to our eyes to the extent that we do today.
After ONoir
After we left the dinning room and came outside into the light, we had to squint because it felt brighter then it actually was. ?Then some of us left and the rest of us walked around Yorkmills, a very expensive street downtown where you see the most expensive cars parked. We kept walking until we got to the Manulife building and then decided to go to Panorama (51st floor of Manulife building), where you get an amazing view of the city. They had their patio open so we go to sit outside with nice weather and get an awesome view.
Overall it was a different experience which was worthwhile. I am glad I planned something out of the norm this time. Usually I plan things that are?adventurous, but this time it was a different type of adventure which ended really nice!
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Source: http://anugelda.wordpress.com/2013/07/08/dinner-at-onoir-eating-in-complete-darkness/
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