From the minute the blindfold goes on your senses immediately become distorted. Eating in a dining hall of some seventy or so people, the first thing you notice is the wall of sound that distorts the sound of everyone speaking around you. The first feeling I encountered was one of isolation. You have to concentrate much more to hear what other people are saying and being able to distinguish between different voices and from which direction their voices are coming.
At one point I sat in silence and listened. I even closed my eyes behind the blindfold. In a sea of noise, it was quite a calming experience. It feels rather like being in a cocoon or tunnel of some kind. When you do speak, you find yourself overcompensating by speaking louder and exaggerating your voice. It's much more difficult to engage with someone sitting next to you if you can't see them. It's true that so much of our communication is reliant on visual tics and cues we take from people's eyes and facial expressions.
And then there is the eating itself! The first course was soup, served rather helpfully in a cup, rather than a bowl. I should start by saying that all of the food was completely delicious and part of the enjoyment of the occasion was trying to work out what we were eating with each course, because we didn't know beforehand. You need to be rather trusting of your chef and waiting staff!
The chef, Marc, had carefully crafted the menu with an interesting combination of flavours, textures and ingredients. The most revealing aspect of eating this way, is the realisation that you really do eat with your eyes. By being able to see, for example, that there is a carrot on your plate, your brain recognises that it's a carrot and by the time the food reaches your mouth you're already anticipating what it will taste like. When you don't know what you're eating you're completely reliant on your tastebuds to tell you. And the experiment proved to me how bad my tastebuds actually are! I failed to guess on each course what many of the ingredients were! A major talking point for us all during each course was to work out what we were eating.
"Ooh, is that sweet potato?" someone asked. "I think there are onions in this somewhere" someone else said. The textures were confusing. At one point I thought I was eating shredded beef or pork only to realise when I was half way through eating the dish that I was actually eating fish.
Of all the courses, the main course was probably the most difficult to eat as it required you to use a knife and fork without necessarily knowing if you were aiming them in the right direction. Many of us brought the forks to our mouths after several seconds of trying to attach food to them only to discover that we'd missed our target on the plate and were eating air! Someone at the table mentioned they'd read people eat less if they can't see what they're eating because they stop eating when they're full rather than when the plate is empty. Or because they give up trying to snag anything! Some of us resorted to eating with our fingers, a tried and tested method of ensuring we at least got something to eat and didn't go home hungry!
All in all it was a fantastic experience. It brings home to you how much we rely on and take for granted all of our senses when we're in a dining situation, and how incredibly difficult it must be for anyone who has a visual impairment. We only experienced it for a few hours but for our guest and other visually impaired people that is their experience every day.
If you ever get the opportunity to take part in a 'dining in the dark' supper, I really would recommend you try it.
Incidentally, this was our menu:
Cream of courgette and tarragon soup
with red and green pepper bruschetta
Sea salted cod wrapped in Parma ham
with pea puree and sweet tomato sauce
Oven roasted red pepper (v)
filled with sun-dried tomato and butter bean ragout
Twice cooked chunky chips
Baby leek and baby carrot
Brandy snap basket
filled with popcorn ice cream and dark chocolate ganache
topped with puffed rice and cappuccino tuille