THE pursuit of eye-catching cuisine has already brought diners snail porridge and the £100 bowl of soup. But there will be no such alarming sights in the latest culinary experiment — a blacked-out restaurant in which blind staff serve the food.

The restaurateur behind Dans le Noir, which opens this summer in London, maintains the sense of taste is intensified if a diner is not distracted by the food’s presentation or the sight of anything else around them.

Some critics are worried diners may lose some of the social interaction of a meal, but others may find the darkness brings an added sense of intimacy.

However, Edouard de Broglie, who set up the original Dans le Noir in Paris, said his interest was in the sensory not the social aspects of dining.

“The preconception of what food tastes like because of how it looks is gone,” he said. “All your other senses are abruptly awoken and you taste the food like you have never tasted it before. It makes you rethink everything. You become blind and the blind waiters become your guide.”

De Broglie opened his restaurant in Paris last year in association with a French society for the blind. He has now bought the former Maison Novelli in Clerkenwell Green, London, and plans to open in July.

Diners will be shown the menu in a lit reception area. They will then be led by a blind waiter into the blacked-out dining room where they will have to feel for their cutlery, stab in the dark at their food and grope for their wine — served in an unbreakable glass to protect against the inevitable spillages.

The restaurant may attract a new type of clientele. Dr Charles Spence, a lecturer in experimental psychology at Oxford University, said: “We are visually dominant creatures driven by our eyes and anything you can do to change that is a worthwhile venture. I would certainly like to go.

“When your eyes are open, you often ignore what’s going on in your mouth. When you can’t see, you will concentrate more on taste and smell.”

Denise Leigh, the blind opera singer and winner of Channel 4’s talent show Operatunity, said the restaurant would put blind and sighted diners on an equal footing: “I think it is a fabulous idea. I would love to go up to sighted people and nick food off their plate. People are always doing it to me.”

The pioneer of restaurants in the dark is believed to have been Jorge Spielmann, a blind pastor in Zurich. Spielmann had the idea for his restaurant after blindfolding dinner guests at his home so they could share his eating experience.

Spielmann opened his restaurant Blindekuh in 1999 and it generated interest around the world. He said after the launch that diners could be assured of “no visual distractions, only intense concentration”.

Recent novelties in London restaurants have included Buddha Jumps Over the Wall soup, a Chinese dish served at Kai in Mayfair. It costs £108 and includes shark’s fin and abalone sea mollusc.

One of the leading figures in the movement for unconventional food is Heston Blumenthal, 38, owner and chef at the Fat Duck in Bray, Berkshire, a three-Michelin-starred restaurant. He offers diners snail porridge and a mousse poached in liquid nitrogen.

Blumenthal said he would be interested to eat at Dans le Noir: “I will have to give it a go, but I don’t think we are ever going to get to the point where people will be flocking to restaurants in the dark,” he said. “A lot of people go out for the social interaction and I think at the beginning there will be a slight feeling of nervousness.”

Last week, one of the diners at the Paris restaurant, Pascal Loubersac, 46, said: “This experience is a good lesson in humility. Here you pay attention to what people are saying and don’t judge on appearances.”

Additional reporting: Susan Bell in Paris

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