John Nyman
Arts Editor
It’s easy for us to become bored with the idea of food; it’s something we interact with every day, often in the same forms and in the same places. Yet one unique Toronto restaurant provides an experience that will give you a new perspective on everything you thought you knew about what you eat.
O.NOIR, a relatively new addition to Toronto’s cuisine scene, gives its patrons a one-of-a-kind opportunity – eating in the dark. Pitch-dark. The restaurant’s dining room is literally lightless – you can’t even see your hand in front of your face – requiring its patrons to use their other senses and experience an adventure of smell, touch and taste.
You get the feeling O.NOIR falls outside your normal dining experience as soon you enter. After walking down a wide tunnel of stairs at the intersection of Church Street and Charles Street and wandering through the restaurant’s dim underground hallways, you find yourself at the bar, where patrons order and cash out after their meals. Before long, you’re introduced to your server – all of whom are blind – who leads you carefully to your seat in the dining room. After he explains what’s sitting in front of you on your table (fork, knife, napkin) you’re left in the dark.
The experience of eating at O.NOIR is absolutely striking from the very beginning, even though the first moments of intrigue may come from an unexpected source. The first bite you take at O.NOIR will be the most engaging mouthful of warm, fresh bread you ever taste.
With your sense of sight totally cut off, all of the other experiences of eating – the taste, texture, smell and warmth of your food, and even the sound of eating it – are amplified. You become acutely aware of the brittle, crunchy crust of the bun giving way to the moist, doughy centre. If you add a bit of butter, the deliciousness of its salt and fat are multiplied tenfold.
Don’t take that as a slight against the quality of O.NOIR’s dishes; judged on their own merit against comparable restaurants, they’re pretty good. But O.NOIR’s real uniqueness comes across in the way ordinary foods are transformed by the pitch-dark environment. A basic main course, consisting of a stew of familiar vegetables and meat, becomes a full panoply of discoveries. Potatoes become strongly identifiable by their mushiness and moist starchiness. Bell pepper slices are noticeably hard, smooth and sweet. Simple squash feels dense and tastes rich. Mushrooms are especially rubbery. Your meal may even include a few ingredients you can’t identify – foods you’ve learned to recognize so much by their appearance that tasting and feeling them seems like enjoying something completely new. This food rediscovery is enhanced by a small yet diverse menu, which includes some texturally interesting additions such as O.NOIR’s grilled octopus. For the truly adventurous, surprise dishes are also available for every course.
Regardless of what they’re eating, O.NOIR diners will often find they’ll have to use their hands to find and grab their food. This only adds to the experience, though, mixing in the sense of touch we take for granted while eating.
In fact, the experience of simply being in the dark provides its own kind of giddy thrill. Once you’ve settled in and gotten comfortable for the one and a half to two hours you’ll likely spend in the dining room, you and your companions can start to explore the possibilities of a world without vision.
“[People] usually come for the experience,” said O.NOIR bartender Priscila Machado. “They get really, really excited because they hear that the experience is different.”
For many, however, a meal at O.NOIR goes far beyond simple thrill-seeking; it also provides an opportunity to better understand blindness.
“A lot of people have […] people in their family […] that are disabled in some way, so when they come here they feel at home. We’ve had even little kids who are visually impaired […] come here, and they have fun as well,” said Machado.
The theme is apparent even in the restaurant’s decor: a huge diagram of the Braille alphabet covers one of the walls near the bar, and a rather fitting Shakespearean passage greets visitors on their way in: “There is no darkness but ignorance.” O.NOIR also contributes to charity work for the blind.
The sense of cooperation and mutual understanding, even if it only lasts for an hour or two, is also enhanced by diners’ closer interactions with their waiter. None of O.NOIR’s waiters have more than 10 percent of their vision, making them especially suited to working in the dark. Over the course of their meal, patrons will have to depend on their waiter’s help and patience with even the simplest tasks.
“You’re trusting them with how the experience is going to be,” said Machado. When all the elements are put together, O.NOIR becomes an experience that’s fun, deeply informative and delicious.
