I’ve been reading a lot about these blind restaurants recently. You know, the ones where you eat in the pitch black and are served by blind waiters. Apparently it’s a sensory experience due to the lack of one sense heightening the others, but I just wanted to go ‘cos I hate people watching me eat.
However, looking at the reviews, it seems the restaurant’s actually pretty shit. One reviewer said; ‘I left feeling hungry and cheated. If you want to recreate this experience, don’t bother going here – do it yourself at home by turning the lights off and serving a tin of cat food to your guests.’
So I decided to do just that. Minus the cat food – I once ate dog food as a child and it was pretty tasteless.
For one night only, I opened up Bowman’s Bistro to two very special customers – my housemates Bekki and Rosie. Bekki was excited about eating in the dark as her friend had been to the actual real life restaurant and Rosie just wanted a free feed. Oh look, here they are.
Pictured below are the ingredients for my quality three course meal. I chose a pretty simple and ahem, cheap menu as I’m poor and had been at work all day so couldn’t be arsed with anything fancy. Note the tell-tale yellow ‘reduced to clear’ stickers. FYI – M&S food hall is an amazing place to be late afternoon/early evening. HELLO DISCOUNT!
I cooked in the light as blind cooking over a gas stove is pretty risky. And a major danger for my hair. (Gail Porter looks hot bald – I wouldn’t.) Our lounge doesn’t have a window so blacking out the room was pretty easy. I just turned the light off and shut the doors.
I insisted on papping my diners throughout the meal to annoy them and also to capture what they really look like whilst stuffing their faces.
STARTER
Cream of mushroom soup.
I popped the mushroom soup into a jug and microwaved the bejeezus out of it. Tinned soup is a dream, yah? I’m a bit of a pepper fiend so I threw loads in and ground some on the top for decoration. Bit pointless really considering the whole pitch black thing. Plus the fact it still looked like baby puke.
Here’s a picture of my two willing housemates about to tuck into their soup:
I’m a joker aren’t I?
They both tasted the pepper immediately and I realised that perhaps I had gone overboard with my seasoning. Rosie was quick off the mark and worked out what she was eating fairly swiftly but Bekki took a while. “It’s quite slimey, isn’t it?” she offered. Er, yes Bekki, slimey.
Bekki’s a pretty slow eater which wasn’t helped when halfway through she exclaimed, “Oh no, I can see! I can see!” and scuttled off to her room to get her eyemask. When she eventually came back, we prompted her to guess it was mushroom soup. DING!
MAIN COURSE
Wholewheat ‘good for the bowels’ pasta with mushrooms in a tomato and mascarpone sauce. Served with garlic bread. (There should have been some salad but I forgot to buy it. My bad.)
So apparently a main meal is harder to eat blind than a weeny bowl of soup. Rosie kept carrying empty forkfuls up to her mouth which upset her as she was really hungry. When she eventually managed to lift a forkful of pasta to her mouth she was slightly perturbed; “Ooh, I don’t know what that bit is. That’s weird.” Possibly a mushroom, Rosie, possibly a mushroom. Though she was lucky to get a mushroom as I ate most of them while they were cooking. If I was a chef, I’d be well fat mate.
Bekki kept insisting her fork was tapping something hard in the bowl and I had to keep informing her that no, it was just the bowl. After a while I began to wonder if she was going mental.
Later in the meal, however, Bekki discovered that there was in fact a plastic plate in her bowl as well as a delicious pasta dish. I blame the fact I had to serve the dinner up using only a torch for light. Health and safety clearly isn’t my forté. I promise never to open up a real restaurant.
Rosie announced that she loved the garlic bread and Bekki exclaimed, “Oh, was that garlic bread?!” I’m 99% sure she was joking. Okay, maybe 63%.
DESSERT
Cherry chocolate swiss roll with custard.
It doesn’t look or even sound amazing but it tasted bloody marvellous. And as my diners couldn’t see that they were eating out-of-date swiss roll with instant custard, they totally agreed.
“It tastes like strawberry,” Rosie offered after her first mouthful. “And chocolate.” Bekki disagreed; “It’s not chocolate, it’s definitely not chocolate.” A few minutes later she decided it “definitely was chocolate”. Rosie’s savvy tastebuds then advised her it was cherry, not strawberry but she also realised there was “an element missing”. That’ll be the buttercream. Clever girl.
Despite being pretty dire with the flavours, Bekki worked out the shape and realised it was a roly poly. She enjoyed it so much I caught her licking her bowl. Disgusting.
Afterwards Bekki insisted on doing the washing up (score!) with her eyemask on to fully immerse herself in the experience. Who was I to disagree? She didn’t even smash anything. Well done.
CONCLUSION
I had hoped to end with a LOL-tastic photo of my two housemates covered head to toe in pasta sauce but no such luck. They didn’t get a spot of food on them. So instead, here’s a picture of a child covered in spaghetti.
Isn’t he amazing? Anyway. here’s what my blind testers thought of the whole sensory experience blah blah blah:
“I thought it’d be a lot harder to work out what I was eating. But maybe it’s because I’ve got exceptional tastebuds.” Rosie.
“I enjoyed it but maybe it’s because I’m sleepy and can go to sleep straight after in the dark. Ooh, shall we make this a regular thing?” Bekki.
I didn’t get the full experience as I knew full well what shit I was shovelling in my mouth. But I also know that I prefer seeing what I’m eating just in case a spider or a mouse crawls onto your plate or something. And mouse poo makes you go blind anyway so that would be pretty ironic, non?
