Just a year after the restaurant Dans le Noir opened its doors on Rue Quincampoix in Paris, patrons are still in the dark - and that seems to be how they like it because the place is thriving. The restaurant operates in a total blackout. "It awakens your other senses," suggests founder Edouard de Broglie. "It alters your perspective, your relations with others. It shows what happens when you can't see", writes Frank Shouldice
Customers are guided to tables to be served. In keeping with a policy to overcome disability in the workplace all waiting staff are blind. In fact everybody who works at Dans le Noir is blind except for the chef and bar staff. You pre-order food and drink in the foyer and then wait for a waitress to lead you inside through the dark. Once seated, you acclimatise to your inky surroundings while the food is being prepared. It is then served in pitch blackness using standard cutlery and unbreakable glasses. Hands are guided to plates. After finishing the meal you must call the waitress to escort you back safely to the foyer.
Visitors are invited to sign a book afterwards and assess the experience. The vast majority of reactions are highly positive, referring to the attenuation of sound, smell and touch when sight is lost. One particularly enthusiastic Irish visitor wrote a full page extolling the idea. "Is fearr coinneal a lasadh ná an dorchadas a mhallachtú," he concluded - advice which might appear more than a little cryptic to non-Gaelgeoirs in Paris.
Jean-Pierre Raffarin appears on the restaurant list of VIPs. "I felt serenity," he declared after stopping by last year. "As I was deprived of my sight other senses were enhanced, especially my hearing, and my touch were more precise." Considering he recently lost his position as prime minister of France Raffarin might well return to the darkness if he wants to get his touch back.
The idea has certainly caught on. Dans le Noir reports a steady trade and similar ventures are running in Zurich and Berlin with another branch set to open in London.The restaurant runs two sittings nightly with a three-course meal on offer at € 37. Customers choose from a fixed menu or submit to a "surprise menu". As you can't see what you are eating everything should probably count as a surprise.
This must also be the only establishment in Paris where you pay less to sit outside. A Sunday brunch, for example, costs € 19 to have on the terrace but € 25 to eat in the dark.
I felt that eating in the dark was perhaps a bridge too far so a French friend and I took the simpler option of dropping in for a drink. We ordered two mojitos - € 10 each - and our charming blind escort Susanna appeared in the foyer, walking unassisted. She knows this path well.
The only giveaway was her golden Labrador lying in the foyer, dozing like a regular. Guide dogs are not allowed into the restaurant. The first requirement is that all customers must forfeit anything that might disturb the silence and darkness within. This includes mobile phones, bleepers, cigarette lighters, matches (smoking is legal in French bars, but not allowed here) watches, cameras, personal stereos. All items are deposited in lockers provided free of charge in the foyer.
Susanna invited us to follow her, gently advising us there were three curtains before we actually entered the restaurant. I was to place my hand on her shoulder so she could lead the way. My friend followed behind me, our party advancing with the caginess of three visually-impaired mice.
Past the first curtain the light began to dim. By the second it was quite dark and as soon as we brushed past the third curtain all light was extinguished. Completely. Susanna led on and although the dining room holds only about 60 people it felt we were on a long, winding path. Voices from other tables filtered through, laughter, a clink of glasses, sounds disconnected from images.
What was particularly strange was that Dans Le Noir offers no visual acclimatisation whatsoever. It's not like entering a dimly-lit room where your eyes gradually adjust. This was simply a deep-water plunge into absolute darkness.
The murmur of disembodied voices also lent it a dreamlike, even nightmarish, quality. As Susanna negotiated our path onwards all I could think of was how distant the door now seemed. Or where was it anyway? In which direction? I couldn't tell.
After what seemed like ages - in reality, not a long time - she sat us at our table. I tried to get my bearings but the room suddenly felt very warm. Surrounded by easy laughter in the dark with no visible way out I instantly decided I wanted to leave. I was also keenly aware that Susanna was the only means of escape and, fearing the lifeboat was about to leave the jetty, I told her I could not stay. She asked me if I felt claustrophobic. It wasn't quite that - more like utter disorientation - but sensing my need to leave she calmly led us back out through the dining room into the foyer.
Bar staff were a little surprised to see Les Deux Mojitos re-emerge so quickly. It was, on my part, both a humbling U-turn and a welcome opportunity to empathise, however briefly, with the visually impaired. I was surprised I could not quell the fear and although I regretted conceding defeat so easily I was also glad to be back under lights.
"Do many people ask to leave like that?" I asked.
"No," replied the barman. "Maybe one person in two hundred."
Susanna and another blind waitress sympathised and assured me I would be fine. Darkness is not for everybody, they smiled.
Then they went back to work, leaving me a little more illuminated than before.