{"id":382,"date":"2008-10-29T09:09:10","date_gmt":"2008-10-29T09:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dine-online.co.uk\/foodie\/dan-le-noir-clerkenwell-green-london\/"},"modified":"2008-10-29T09:09:10","modified_gmt":"2008-10-29T09:09:10","slug":"dan-le-noir-clerkenwell-green-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dine-online.co.uk\/foodie\/dan-le-noir-clerkenwell-green-london\/","title":{"rendered":"Dan le Noir, Clerkenwell Green, London"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dans le Noir is a restaurant offering the visitor a dining experience in complete darkness.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kang Leong lets us know his experience<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan le Noir
\n31-33 Clerkenwell Green
\nEC1R 0DU
\nTel: 020 7253 1100<\/p>\n

There are only a few places in Europe where you can find a place to do
\nthis. Fortunately for us folks in London, you can experience this at Dan
\nle Noir. No I’m not pulling your leg, this is a genuine restaurant and a
\nvery real concept.<\/p>\n

Explain ‘complete darkness’ to me again?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The creators emphasize that Dan le noir lets you ‘completely re-evaluate
\nyour notions of taste’ as they strip you of your sense of sight and force
\nyou to rely on your other senses to truly taste the ‘truth of the food’.<\/p>\n

Lets demystify that a little. The concept is rather straightforward,
\nreally. When you arrive, you must put away any light emitting elements,
\nie, mobile phones, watches that ‘light up’ in the lockers provided in the
\nreception area. You can also have some drinks in the completely lit bar on
\nthe 1st floor. After which, the blind waiters will guide you through to
\nthe dining room which is completely pitch black.<\/p>\n

My experience.. twice.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’ve actually been to this place twice and both times, it was a
\nreal..well, experience. I must say that it’s still quite vivid in my
\nmemory because I can still remember the smell of the food and the sounds.
\nOddly enough, it’s quite sticky in my mind even though I didn’t have any
\nvisual memories of it.<\/p>\n

Ok, if you want to eat here, you need to book about a week in advance just
\nso they can make arrangments. It’s partly a good thing because Dan le noir
\nactually helps promote awareness for the blind and also help to support
\nthe community. Ok, the first thing you do is order from a surprise menu
\nand specify if you want the meat, fish or veg menu. Part of the experience
\nis to ‘guess’ what you are eating by trying to identify the flavours. The
\nidea is that once you are robbed of one of your senses, the others should
\nwork hard to compensate for it and become amplified.<\/p>\n

The first time I closed my eyes<\/strong><\/p>\n

I put my hand on the waiter’s shoulder and he takes me into the land of
\nthe dark. I have my eyes completely wide open, but the room is really
\npitch dark (except for this faint speck of light in the distance which I
\ncan’t make out what it is..). It really does feel quite jarring and almost
\nimmediately my hearing is amplified and the waiter’s voice is sort of,
\nwell, kinda sounds cooler.<\/p>\n

It’s like watching a movie, all fine and dandy.. and then suddenly the
\nperson on screen turns into like a fantasy character like Gandalf or
\nsomething and whoosh, ‘welcome to a brand new world’. sorry for the
\ndramatics, but it’s just to emphasize the point that I really did feel
\ndisorientated.
\n
\nDecor<\/strong><\/p>\n

I can hear my friends’ voice sort of coming from in front of me. Never
\nreally noticed she had such a sexy, smouldering voice. At this point, our
\nwaiter starts telling us where the cutlery is and he tells me that he has
\nplaced a bottle of water in front of me. So I reach out and start feeling
\nfor a bottle.<\/p>\n

As my hand runs across the table, I start feeling edges, the creaks, the
\nstuff on it and the wood. I begin to imagine what the decor would look
\nlike, I notice the creaking floorboards, so I can only assume the wooden
\nfloors as well. My perception of the space starts to take on a life of its
\nown as my imagination starts going wild. All the subtle background noises,
\nlike tapping shoes, clicking heels, the chatter suddenly become part of
\nthe decor and in my mind, that information kind of helped to build an
\nimage of the space, almost abit like the way you build up a scene in your
\nhead while you are reading a book.<\/p>\n

What an interesting experience! At this point, I also started to notice
\nthe music, a spanish guitar in the background and someone singing in
\nspanish. Without really trying, I could really feel my hearing slowly
\ngetting more astute, even though at this point, my head was still spinning
\na little but I was slowly adapting to the change.
\n
\nThumb in glass<\/strong><\/p>\n

Finally I found the bottle. It seems my mate had since adjusted to the
\nchanges long before I did. In order to measure how much to pour, the
\nwaiter instructed us to stick our finger in the glass to get to the
\nsatisfactory level. At first this simple task seemed so daunting, but
\neventually, I got used to it and got into the swing of things.<\/p>\n

Starting to eat blind<\/strong><\/p>\n

The starters arrived and the waiter tells me where he is and which
\ndirection he’s going to serve me from and I have to reply so that he knows
\nwhere I am too. All throughout this time, I notice that we were all
\ntalking alot more to maintain that connection with the people around us,
\nabit like a mass conference call, except the person is actually right in
\nfront of you.<\/p>\n

Anyway, the starters were what I can describe as four parcels of food. Oh,
\nI did try with cutlery at first but all I kept doing was stab either the
\ntable or the plate. So I ditched that and proceded to use my fingers to
\nfeel the plate for what ever was on it. So the first one felt gooey and
\nmoist. Two of them felt dry, like it’s been deep fried. And the last one
\nhad a gooey middle bit, encrusted in pastry.<\/p>\n

I try each one in succession. The first one definitely was some sort of
\nstuffed ravioli.. I wasn’t really sure what was inside, pumpkin maybe? And
\nanother meat. venison? The smell was quite strong, but I couldn’t seem to
\nplace it at all. The same went for the rest of the other starters, I kind
\nof knew, but at the same time, didn’t really know what I was scoffing.<\/p>\n

At this point, I think I was still very concious of the fact that I was
\neating blind.<\/p>\n

Strong smell Mains<\/strong><\/p>\n

I must say, everything smells so much stronger. To the point where some of
\nthe food, was abit overpowering. That mains is definitely lamb. Lamb in a
\nthick sauce with lentil beans I believe it is. The lamb smell was so
\nstrong that it kind of stank a little. And it was abit on the spicy side
\ntoo. I really did try to use my cutlery, but in the end I was just using
\nmy hands to pick the food up. I didn’t really know if I managed to finish
\neverything on my plate, but I did poke around just to make sure.<\/p>\n

Phew, I think I survived that. The jarring feeling of not being able to
\nsee has kind of left me now and I was feeling more comfortable relying on
\nthe remaining senses. I was also reaching out to try and poke my friend. I
\nthink I got her in the eye a couple of times.
\n
\nDessert and back to the light<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh yeah, dessert was pleasant. It tasted like chocolate mousse, but it was
\nreally grainy instead of a smooth texture. You know, this was fun,
\ndefinitely an experience, but I’m really ready to head back to the light
\nagain.<\/p>\n

Hand back on the waiter’s broad shoulders and before long that faint speck
\nof light in the distance, slowly got brighter and brighter.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wow, I felt like I was transported into another world altogether. At the
\nreception area, I was glad to sort of get back to reality, yet at the same
\ntime, my mind couldn’t help but playback the experience I had in the dark
\nroom. At times, it was jarring, when eating it was abit challenging
\n(especially when I was trying to nick my mate’s food from her plate) and I
\nnoticed chatter and noise can actually be rather interesting things to
\ntune into.<\/p>\n

In terms of discovering the ‘truth of food’<\/strong>, I must admit the food is full
\nof pretty distinctly contrasting flavours, which i could easily separate
\nout, but I found it really hard to identify what it was. When we were
\nshown the menu at the end, some of our guesses were right and some weren’t.
\nI did notice that alot of more unidentifiable ingredients were used for
\neach dish.. but I could only discern the major ones. (ie, stinky lamb)<\/p>\n

Is it worth it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, 2 courses start from \u00a332 and 3 courses can be had at \u00a338. This does
\nnot include drinks or service so it’s alittle on the pricy side. However,
\nsomething like this, you really go for the experience and not just the
\nfood alone. Jay Rayner kind of panned the food during his visit, but I
\nactually thought the food was alright. Although, I must say, I was so
\ndistracted by the fact that I couldn’t see it, my mind just didnt really
\nconcentrate on whether it was actually spot-on cooking or not.<\/p>\n

You only live once and you’ve got to try this out if you’ve not already
\ndone so. An experience, you’re unlikely to forget.<\/p>\n

Dan le Noir
\n31-33 Clerkenwell Green
\nEC1R 0DU
\nTel: 020 7253 1100<\/strong><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.danslenoir.com\/london\/<\/a><\/p>\n

_____ Kang Leong ______<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dans le Noir is a restaurant offering the visitor a dining experience in complete darkness. Kang Leong lets us know his experience Dan le Noir 31-33 Clerkenwell Green EC1R 0DU Tel: 020 7253 1100 There are only a few places in Europe where you can find a place to do this. Fortunately for us folks read more …<\/span><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dine-online.co.uk\/foodie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dine-online.co.uk\/foodie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dine-online.co.uk\/foodie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dine-online.co.uk\/foodie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dine-online.co.uk\/foodie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dine-online.co.uk\/foodie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dine-online.co.uk\/foodie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dine-online.co.uk\/foodie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dine-online.co.uk\/foodie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}