I recently went to a very popular restaurant in Vancouver called Dark Table. If you haven't already figured out by the title of this post and the name of the restaurant, essentially you eat in the dark. The idea is that when your sight is taken away, your other senses such as taste are heightened.
When we first arrived, they gave us a menu and we sat in a lit area on the front patio where we could read the menu and place our order. We were then escorted by our server, who is blind, inside the restaurant to our table. The darkness in the restaurant is like nothing I've ever experienced. It was so incredibly dark, I don't know if my describing it will do it justice. When you first get inside, you're constantly waiting for your eyes to adjust so you could at least see the outlines of things around you. That never happened. You are just sitting in complete darkness.
When the food arrived, that's when the real fun began. They have a few different options for meal courses, but we went with the 3 course meal; a starter, an entree, and dessert. When we placed our order we only got to choose the entree, the rest is left as a surprise. Our starter was some type of salad, my entree was risotto with garlic prawns and veggies, and dessert was strawberry cheesecake, if my senses were working correctly. All the food was pretty tasty, however it made me a little nervous when I was eating something and couldn't quite figure out what it was. The funny part was that sometimes you would bring the fork to your mouth and no food would be on it. That's when I decided to start using my fingers. Yes, I was in a fully public restaurant with other people and I was eating risotto with my fingers but hey, nobody could see me. The rest of the plates went very similar to that and before we knew it the experience was over.
Overall it was a great experience that I would recommend everybody try at least once. I can assure you that it's not for everyone, but it's worth it to give it a try. Normally about now I would post some photos, as that's one of my favorite things about blogging, but my pictures of dinner would be dark nothings. Not to worry, we did take a walk along the water before dinner which I got some good shots of, so here they are.
