The late novelist Rayner Heppenstall once spent a few months in a blindfold,
walking around Newport, Gwent. There are quite a few British towns one might
better experience without actually having to see them, and Newport, I
reckon, falls into that category. Anyway, Heppenstall wished to write a
novel from the point of view of a blind person — a noble and imaginative
idea, I think you will agree. Trouble is, the book, The Blaze of Noon, is
pretty poor. Rayner seems to have been so wrapped up in being a blind person
that he forgot to make the story either interesting or meaningful.
Dans le Noir is a restaurant in Clerkenwell where you eat in total,
bliterating darkness and are served by blind waiters.
This is also a noble and imaginative idea. Trouble is, the food is dreadful.
There is another link between Heppenstall and Dans le Noir. The restaurant
began life in Paris, while the aforementioned novelist was Britain’s only
notable exponent of that otherwise exclusively Gallic innovation, the nouveau
roman. Finding new and extreme ways in which to experience the world is
quite a French thing to do, I suspect, and Dans le Noir in Paris has done
well for itself. Rayner Heppenstall, meanwhile, ended up a bit batty and a
supporter of the National Front. Some things simply don’t translate well
into English. Maybe the restaurant in Clerkenwell will go the same way.
I took my mate Matt to the place, because my regular dining partner “doesn’t
like” blind people, finding them “sinister and arrogant”. I think that’s
unfair: I’ve never had any trouble from them, and our blind waiter, Carl,
was terrific company. Thoughtful, laconic and witty, Carl was the only
reason I would ever venture back to the place. We enjoyed a drink in the bar
together after our terrible meal.
What’s the point of Dans le Noir, you may well be asking. The answer seems to
be twofold: by depriving the diner of sight, it is hoped that his or her
other senses will be heightened. It also enables sighted people to empathise
with nonsighted people. On both of those counts, the restaurant achieves its
aims. But at Dans le Noir, you do not wish for your other senses to be
heightened; you would quite like to be deprived of them too. Especially your
sense of taste.
The bar area, at the front of the restaurant, is lit. You can have a nice
drink there and deposit your belongings in a locker, which gives the place
the air of a municipal swimming pool. After a while, a blind waiter appears
and leads you through heavy curtains to a room enveloped in total darkness.
With the waiter’s help, you fumble into your seat and attempt to locate your
cutlery and alcohol, hearing strangely disembodied chatter from fellow
diners. It is, without doubt, a hugely disconcerting, disorienting
experience, claustrophobic almost to the degree that it induces panic. And,
just when you are attempting to come to terms with the whole thing, your
food (chosen from a menu in the bar) arrives and the sense of panic
increases.
I chose three tastes of salmon, but could distinguish only two: salmon in
mayonnaise and raw salmon not in mayonnaise. Matt had three tastes of
asparagus, which he described as being one taste of asparagus: ie,
asparagus.
My main course was fricassee of chicken with smoked mashed potato, one of the
most unpleasant dishes I think I have ever eaten: a huge gloop of pulverised
spud with the flavour of burnt rubber, underneath which resided some chunks
of fried chicken and the occasional red pepper. Matt’s barracuda was, if
anything, even worse: a wretched chunk of unimaginably tough fish entombed
in batter. I once swam alongside some beautiful barracudas off the coast of
Malaysia, a shoal of haughty, blank-eyed, streamlined, shimmering wonder.
But this was an unwise leisure pursuit, according to the diving instructor,
because barracudas can be “very nasty creatures indeed”. Only now do I truly
understand what he meant. I think he must have spent an evening at Dans le
Noir.
So, we struggled through our meal in the gloom. All the while, Carl hovered
nearby, guiding our hands towards the bottle of wine (which, curiously,
emptied itself rather more quickly than it does when you can see it),
helping out with the bread, ensuring that we were not silently vomiting
under the table.
And those two miserable courses were enough for us. After this sensory
experience, neither of us fancied dessert, and both of us wished to see
something once again, so we were guided back to the bar feeling a little
defeated.
Who would come to Dans le Noir, and why? After a quick vox pop in the bar, I
discovered that our fellow diners were either tourists or homosexuals, or
both: none had been to the restaurant before and none seemed sufficiently
impressed to come back again. Perhaps you would go there if your partner was
a bit of a munter and you wished not to be constantly reminded of the fact
while you ate. Or maybe for a truly blind date.
“What impression were you left with?” Carl asked gently over a glass of red
wine a little later. Matt replied (somewhat untactfully, I thought) that
“blind people eat shit food”. Carl laughed a little mordantly.
You are enjoined not to talk too loudly when at your table; you are threatened
with censure if you get your cigarette lighter out to see what the awful
stuff is on your plate. You are warned against making sudden, unexpected
movements or flailing your arms around. They do not wish you to shriek or
scream, either, or grope people at the tables nearby and blame Carl.
In all, I did not enjoy empathising with blind people. Nor did I expect to.
Perhaps, though, you are not meant to enjoy the experience. Perhaps you are
merely intended to leave the restaurant a little wiser and a little humbler.
And still hungry.
In which case Dans le Noir works, I suppose. It wasn’t expensive, but, rather
like Rayner Heppenstall, they have forgotten an important part of the
equation — the food. And, just in case you think this is a little
unsympathetic, please bear in mind that the chef possesses 20/20 vision:
there is no excuse.
Meanwhile, I will soon be setting up a restaurant where the diners are encased
in straitjackets and the waiters are all amputees. Roll up, roll up. So to
speak.
DANS LE NOIR
One star
30-31 Clerkenwell Green, EC1; 020 7253 1100
Lunch, Mon-Fri, noon-2.30pm; Sat, noon-3pm; Sun, noon-3.30pm. Dinner,
Mon-Sun, 7pm-11pm
5 stars Set your sights on it
4 stars Take in the sights
3 stars Sight for sore eyes
2 stars Out of sight
1 star Shoot on sight
