Once You Go Black...

It’s dark. It’s really dark. Not the sort of dark where you eyes eventually adjust and you begin to pick out vague blue shapes. This is a dark that’s just... black. The perfect setting, then, for a gourmet dinner. Well, that’s the theory put forward by Senses Dining, the company which has brought the “dining in the dark” eating fad to Hong Kong. The gimmick is pretty much self-explanatory: you eat, in the dark. The whole idea started in Zurich a few years ago, moving to New York, London, Beijing – and now Hong Kong. It’s like Daredevil, the blind superhero with massively enhanced senses and kick-ass kung fu skills: but instead of superheroing, taste and texture are meant to come to the fore – assuming you can find the food.

Still in the dark?

Senses is run from a function room in the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Causeway Bay, and it’s not hard to find, thanks to the dark curtains and candlelit lobby. After a quick run-through of the menu in the light, you’re led through a series of heavy curtains into the dining room proper, forming a conga line of diners with your night-vision-goggled waiter at the head – one hand on his shoulder, the other on a railing. Up two sets of stairs – four steps, then sixteen – and then the railings stop, the floor levels out, the blackness edges in and you have absolutely no idea where you are, how big the room is, where you’re about to step. It’s disorienting and it makes you jittery. You’re surrounded by the sounds of cutlery, conversation and smooth jazz – but in the darkness, even Kenny G begins to sound unnatural. Well, even more unnatural.

In a city that never gets switched off, this is the darkest thing you’ve ever experienced. Draw the curtains. Turn off the lights, too. Cover your head with a pillow. Hide under a thick blanket. Now close your eyes. Squeeze them shut and put both hands over them. And now you’re still nowhere close to how dark it is. It’s suffocating, at first. Your eyes strain, trying to pick out traces of light, convincing you of cracks of light and shape. Every few minutes someone says, “I think it just got darker," and you wonder if the lights have been turned even more off.

The light at the end of the tunnel

But eventually you get over most of the disorientation. It’s almost relaxing, as you give yourself up to not being in control. Senses employs blind and partially sighted waiters; the management and some staff are equipped with night vision goggles to light their way – so don’t do anything you wouldn’t do in front of your mother. The staff navigate the tables with ease, serving drinks in chunky, hard-to-tip stein-shaped mugs. You can’t get a beer or a glass of wine, but that’s understandable: knives, alcohol and blindness do not make good bedfellows.

But the whole point of a dark dining experience is the food – being able to taste with newness and novelty. The meal comes in an unfeasibly large bento box, each segment containing a different dish: no doubt multiple courses on multiple plates pretty much guarantees disaster. Nothing’s too hot and nothing requires too much chopping, for obvious reasons. You’re provided with a full set of cutlery, but you can be pretty sure that table manners aren’t the rule of the day. It soon becomes clear that the easiest way to eat is the touch-and-spear method: your free hand finds something that feels edible and the fork hand tries to stab at something in the vicinity. It’s messy, it’s unglamorous, but hey – who’s looking? One complaint is that the food isn’t as exciting as it should be – spaghetti carbonara and honey-glazed ham, battered fish and Caesar salad. What’s really needed to overcome the novelty factor and keep the public returning is a menu that really challenges the tastebuds: flavors you find identifiable, but can’t quite name. What better place to serve daring food, after all, than in a restaurant where you can’t see what you’re eating?

Their eyes did not meet across the table

A regrettably grope-free evening for us, but Senses is mindful of the possibilities – hence its “Dating in the Dark” events, where a group of men and woman are sat around a table and allowed to haltingly feel their way towards love. Not so different from sighted dating, come to think of it. “Blind date” puns notwithstanding, it’ll test the adage that personality is what really matters. Superficial people, watch it. Not that you can.