by Note: Though we greatly enjoyed it, there are no photos of this particular meal on Facebook, Instagram, or in this post. Read on and you’ll learn why!
Doug and I had a fascinating dinner at Onoir Restaurant in Montreal, Canada, where most of the dining experience is carried out in absolute darkness. This is the first restaurant offering this in North America. The service is carried out by blind servers, and many of the staff are also vision-impaired. The food is prepared by sighted chefs, however.
Reservations were necessary for this experience, and the restaurant is sold out on many nights. We arrived in a timely fashion, and started in a small normally-lit room with some seating and a bar. We hung up our coats, and were advised to use the restroom now, as it would be much easier than later when we were in the dining room. To preserve the light-less experience, we were also asked to lock up our phones, and Doug was even asked to remove his watch, lest the hands glow in the dark!
Next, we ordered drinks and perused the menu. One of the staff (who was vision-impaired) explained how things would work and then took our orders. The standard was a two-course meal, with an entree and dessert, but you could also order a three- or four-course meal which included a hot and/or cold appetizer. I opted for two courses, while Doug went all in for the four-course selection.
But here’s the fun part of the menu: in addition to the selections offered, each course had a “surprise” option, an item that was otherwise not on the menu! For most, you can could specify whether your surprise would be “sea,” “land,” or “vegetarian,” depending on your personal preferences. Doug was tempted, and ultimately decided to order the hot “sea” surprise appetizer and cold “land” surprise appetizer, while ordering off the menu for the main entrée and dessert.
After that, we sat and waited for just a few minutes –– a bit nervously, I might say, wondering what exactly we had gotten ourselves into –– for our waiter Matthew to announce himself.
Matthew appeared in a doorway and called our names, and we bounded over and exchanged greetings. He prepared us to enter the dining room, turning around to have me place my left hand on his left shoulder. Doug followed with his left hand on my left shoulder. We belatedly realized that ordering drinks beforehand meant we had to navigate to our seats in the dark with drinks in hand.
We entered into a small vestibule, which was pitch black. With the door behind us safely closed, we were in a sort of “light lock” to ensure that no light entered the dining room. Matthew then guided us through a second door. Taking absolutely the tiniest steps, we shuffled through the dining room in a chain, until Matthew took my hand and placed it on the back of the chair, and then did the same for Doug. We were successfully seated! We were instructed to call out Matthew’s name if we needed anything, and needless to say in no circumstances ever stand up and try to move around the restaurant on our own.
When I say it was pitch black, I mean it. There wasn’t even a fire alarm exit sign. My eyes continued to try to adjust to the absence of light, and I quickly realized I’d rather just close them for the duration. Doug, kept his open for the most part.
We both took in the sounds around us, trying to guess the layout of the room and the number of other tables and diners. We knew we had a wall to my left, which meant all service would be from my right. I moved my drinks over to the wall, terrified I would have an accident.
We both tucked our napkins into the top of our shirts, expecting things to get messy, and knowing that no one would ever know of our breach of etiquette!
Matthew materialized seemingly out of thin air, and alerted us to rolls he was placing in the center of the table, along with butter next it. Doug and I slowly crept our hands across the table, feeling out the rolls and butter (and each other). Now to get the butter onto a knife and then actually butter the roll. I found myself holding the very tip of the knife in order to complete the job.
Doug’s surprise seafood appetizer arrived, and now he had the task of eating something he couldn’t see, and trying to deduce what it was without any visual queues at all. He felt the outside of the dish, which was hot from the oven, and moved his fork around in the dish to get a sense of the texture of the contents, identifying “chunks” of something in a sauce. He was able to spear a bit and raise it to his mouth, and take a bite. Shrimp? — no, perhaps lobster! — in a creamy sauce. There were other seafoods in the dish, and toasted breadcrumbs on top to give it a bunch of crunch.
Then came the task of sharing some bites with me in the dark. It was completely transfixing. Doug found himself talking out loud to describe each element in the dish as he discovered it, trying to capture the thoughts before they fled his overworked brain.
The cold land appetizer (which I couldn’t try) was a completely different challenge. It had multiple components to it, spread out across the dish, so Doug had to figure out what was what and how –– if –– it all went together. His first bite was nothing but a mouthful of a fruity, sweet sauce, and the second bite was a mouthful of bitter and chewy spring greens. After some further exploration, he found some solid strips of the “land” component. These were dense and firm, and a bit gamey. Doug decided it was a sliced breast of cold poultry, thinking at first it was something like a guinea hen, but ultimately settled that it was likely duck. As much as he tried, he was never able to get a mouthful of greens, sauce, and duck all at the same time as you might do if you could see what you were eating!
Matthew told us that he would not be able to tell us what the surprise dishes were during the meal (lest other customers hear), but would let us know after we exited the dining room at the end of the meal. Doug thoroughly enjoyed the detective work involved in trying to figure out what the appetizers were, relying on smell, touch, and taste.
Our main dishes arrived next. Doug ordered carbonara with guanciale, tomato chips, parmesan, and micro-greens, while I ordered gnocchi with squash, parmesan, roasted squash seeds, and micro-sprouts. On our own, we had both figured that a pasta dish was a good choice, as it was easy to stab or scoop up pieces and get them successfully in your mouth. Something that would require cutting an entree with a sharp knife — like the lamb shank that was on the menu — seemed like a disaster waiting to happen (at least for first-timers dark diners like us!).
Each time Matthew appeared to remove plates and deliver another course, it was as if he simply “appeared” out of the blue with no footsteps announcing his presences. Impressively, there was no clanging of dishware or banging against other dishes or glasses as he put down and took away each course.
The volume in the restaurant grew louder as more patrons arrived, and it was really interesting to listen to the often-exuberant large parties at some tables, chatting away in both French and English just like in any other restaurant in Montreal, or the quiet conversation of the couple sitting behind Doug. At one point I noticed that I still waved my hands around for effect when talking. Of course, Doug couldn’t see that I was waving my hands round, so I had to tell him that I was waving my hands around so he could properly “hear” me! We pondered how the waiters were moving through the restaurant carrying plates of food without bumping into each other or patrons in the process of being seated or leaving.
Doug had the coconut milk and cardamom flan flan for dessert, and I had a chocolate lava cake with vanilla ice cream. Normally I would eat that by having a little cake, a little lava, and a little ice cream on my fork at once. It was absolutely impossible. I repeatedly got only a little of bit of one with nothing else –– or just as frequently, a forkful of nothing.
When we were finished with our meal, Matthew led us back out using the same method we had used coming in. He revealed the appetizers to us, Seafood Coquille St. Jacques and cold duck with cranberry and greens. In the outer room, we wrapped up and paid our check. My hands were pretty sticky with food, but we otherwise managed to remain clean.
We asked how many people were in the dining room with us –– we had guessed around 40, and they said there were 34 diners that evening. My only regret is that they did not show us pictures of the room layout and the foods we had received. I would have loved to have known what both looked like compared to what I had envisioned.
Doug and I both agreed that the experience was absolutely spellbinding, growing more so the more we thought about it afterwards. Doug did later did note that his memories of the meal were “different” than other memories because they didn’t have a visual element. Our sense of time was also affected by the intense concentration required to navigate the challenges of the evening; we were both surprised to learn that we had spent around two hours in the dark. Time went by very quickly.
I’m so grateful to have a partner who is up to try interesting experiences outside our comfort zone. It was a dinner we won’t soon forget. We both were grateful to have gained some insight into the challenges faced every day by people who are visually impaired. The restaurant is committed to helping visually impaired people enter the job market, a population that experiences a 70% unemployment rate.
If you’re interested in a similar experience, Onoir has restaurants in Montreal and Toronto. There are other restaurants offering similar experiences by blindfolding their guests, but honestly I think what we did was much more interesting. If you live in the northeast, Toronto and Montreal are really right there, just a short flight, train, or car ride away.
Great post! Most interesting!
Thanks!