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Dining in the Dark Experience: A Unique Blindfolded Dining Adventure
It’s a whole thing that is sweeping the world. Well, I don’t know about the entire world, but it’s certainly been popularized in many different cities in the United States and even has now flown into many cities in Europe. It’s basically blindfolded dining, you won’t be able to see what are you eating or drinking. I tried it and this is my dining in the dark experience.
My kids had this event last year, and apparently, one of their teachers, this really amazing guy, is blind. He was not born blind. He has an incredibly rare illness that literally took away 90% of his vision within a three-year span, and he has become this huge advocate for climbing volcanoes, he climbs mountains. Not only that, but he’s planning on doing Mount Everest. So his whole thing is advocacy and also opening up the minds of people to see things differently.
He’s also very big on funding for nonprofit organizations, and he took over a class in my kids’ school where they had to raise funding for the school. So it was more of a whole project. And he came up with a blindfolded dining experience because he’s been to others, even though for him, dining in the dark is a normal thing.
What is Blindfolded Dining (Dining in the Dark Experience)?
Literally, you are dining in the dark, but as far as being blind, they put a blindfold on you, and the majority of the places that offer this, it’s not really restaurants. It’s on venues. They turn off the entire lights. Everything is completely black, all your other senses come to life.
We did that in our school because the kid’s school that my kids go to is on this huge farm, but they also have a restaurant. It was dining in the dark night.
You could find these, go and check. Just put it in dining in the dark or blindfolded dining and the area that you’re either visiting or even buying your home. You’ll be surprised. There are quite a lot of options already.
Blindfolded Dining Experience
The way it starts, as they put these blindfolds on you, and for us, we had to have a reservation for the number of people per table so that we kind of go with the group, and it’s really cool like that.
We are led to our table, and at this specific event, there were like three or four different restaurants that sent different dishes for you to eat. At first, when you first sit down, it’s so awkward. Being led is so awkward, but you start to really get inside the person, the blind person’s world, literally. That’s what it’s about, even though it’s supposed to heighten your senses.
For me, this was an extra important thing because my grandmother has been blind for the majority of my life, and she was diagnosed also at the age of 20 with a rare illness that she was told that by 65 years old, she would be 100% blind, and by 65, that’s exactly what happened. Today. She’s almost 95. For the majority of my adult life, she has been blind.
So it really allowed me to even go further into what her world is like. It’s really difficult. The helplessness being taken, the need for help, because you need help all the time. So also on top of your tasting senses, the rest of your senses are also coming to life.
Once you’re sitting down, then you’re hanging out with your friends, and you’re talking, and it’s fascinating because what happens is you don’t know if they’re listening to you. Obviously, they are, because you could hear them, yes or no. But a blind person and they’re all in the same boat as you blind, literally. But in the real world of blind people, the other blind people don’t know if there’s anybody even standing next to them or if they’re listening to you if they’re paying attention to you. That makes you feel even more self-conscious and self-aware.
Eating Blindfolded
So all this is coming up before we even sit down and have our first dish. Our first dish comes out, and we’re having a blast. By the way, it feels like all these scents are heightened, but it’s really fun as we do it as well because it’s just such an internal adventure on top of being an external adventure. So the first dish comes out, and we have no idea where our forks and knives are. Half of us are just going with our hands, and it feels fine.
But if you think of it, in reality, a blind person would be doing that same thing, and it’s just not suitable for others to do. You start to understand that, wait, we can’t judge them. They really can’t see your thoughts.
Then within the second dish, because at first you really are tempted to remove your blindfold. You really want to try and squint to see if you could see through. But within, I’d say 20 minutes or even 30 minutes, it becomes normal. You don’t even think of the blindfold at all.
If you need to go to the bathroom, ask somebody to help you and walk you to the bathroom. And even inside the bathroom, when you could totally remove your blindfold, somehow you just don’t. It becomes very natural, and the sense is, yes, they do completely wake up and there’s all this on top of it. But for me, it was more of the overall sensory of my mind, the shifting in the mind.
It was an incredible internal journey, which I really recommend everyone to go and do. So my recommendation is to make every day an adventure, and seek something different. Seek out something different for you to eat and for you to do, and dining in the dark is the best way to begin.
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