Restaurant Review: O Noir

Thursday was my 3 year anniversary with boyfriend :) Hooray! In celebration of this feat, we went out for dinner at O Noir's Toronto location.

The premise: O Noir is a restaurant entirely in the dark. Serious dark, not like, candlelight or something. You can't see your table, your food, your waiter, or even your hand right in front of your face.

I've never experienced darkness so all-consuming before! You order your food and drinks in the lobby, which is lit, before being led conga-line style by a blind waiter into the pitch-black dining room. Somehow, without crashing into other diners, tables or obstacles, we were led to a table and given a verbal layout of our place setting: a fork on one side, knife (!) on the other, plate and napkin in front of you.

The food: Given that we are working on being vegetarian, unfortunately there weren't too many options. Luckily, we do still eat fish, so there were still options available :) The grilled herb-and-garlic shrimp on tomato risotto that I had was awesome, though I randomly had a mountain of green beans that I couldn't seem to get around (since I couldn't see what I was stabbing blindly at with my fork, I somehow kept coming up with beans!).

The only downside that I really noticed with the restaurant is that it is REALLY loud. For some reason, people tend to talk much louder when they can't see the people around them, as though they think that they are invisible or alone in the room. Really the people you are talking to are only a foot or two away from your face, but you have no idea. We found that our ability to visualize and perceive our surroundings was heightened enormously by taking away the sense of sight. By feeling around the table, I could visualize the approximate location of each of my utensils, my wine glass, and my plate. I somehow managed not to spill food all over the place as I had anticipated I would (especially since I'm normally pretty clumsy with food, even when I can see it).

We made the point of realizing that we really had no idea what was in front of us. What if it wasn't actually a mountain of green beans, but a pile of some other vegetable? What if the beans were actually yellow, or purple, or covered in a sauce? Using no visual cues forces you to really evaluate what you're tasting, using different cues like flavour and texture to try to understand the food in your mouth.

I highly recommend checking out O Noir at least once in your life to see what it's like to be blind for a couple of hours. It is a very unique experience, and a lesson in patience as you stab blindly at your plate, hoping to pick up even one grain of rice!