Heart of darkness

So, for my birthday this year, TheBloke (TM) took me to a restaurant called Dans Le Noir.  This is a restaurant where you are seated completely in the dark and have to guess what you're eating.  My first thought was, "Fucking A!  I don't have to dress up, wear make-up or make any effort whatsoever.  Best birthday ever."

It backfired a bit when TheBloke (TM) turned up naked.

Not really.  It was a bit chilly for that.  One of the many benefits of an autumn birthday.

So, we turned up at the restaurant, which was in the Clerkenwell/Farringdon area of London that I've always found a bit odd.  It doesn't seem to have found its identity.  It's part marketing agency, part law firm, part finance, part charity sector, and to be honest, it needs to pull its little socks up a bit and decide what it wants to be.

On the way there, we found a cocktail bar doing two mojitos for £6.95.  Big fat bargain!  And a jolly good mojito it was too.

So we trotted off to Dans Le Noir, and - unfortunately - they'd lost our booking.  No worries, and yay for a Monday birthday as it meant that they were able to accommodate us.  We had to put everything we owned in a locker.  Not literally everything we owned.  We didn't have to come back home first, pick up Monty Cat, the Wii, the Mini and our sofa.  Just our bags, phones, watches, and anything that could emit light.

At this point we were introduced to Trevor, our blind waiter.  And there's a sentence I never thought I'd type.  I mean, who's called Trevor?  All the staff at Dans Le Noir are blind.  Well, all the waiting staff are blind anyway.  I imagine it might be a bit hard (though not impossible) to be a chef blind.  And probably a bit of a fire hazard.

Trevor led us conga-style into the restaurant and ensured we were seated safely at our table.  It was dark.  I knew it was going to be dark.  But I didn't realise just how dark.  I assumed that after ten minutes or so your eyes would get used to the dark and be able to pick out shapes.  Nope.  Even after an hour and a half, I still couldn't even see my hand in front of my face.  This might have been because my hand wasn't in front of my face as I was so busy cramming my face with yummy food.  I gave up on cutlery after about twelve seconds.  It slowed me down.  This is a life lesson I might take away with me, and try to implement in non-dark restaurants too.

Amusingly Dans Le Noir made you pour your own water from massive decanters.  I put an elbow in a water puddle not of my own making (at least I hope it was water) at least once.

Instead of having individual tables, we were seated at long bench-style tables.  I guess this is to stop you knocking stuff off the edge of the table incessantly.  However, we were sat unfortunately close to our neighbours, and I definitely groped the Mexican lady sitting next to me at least twice.  She got me back once though, so I think we're almost equal on the lawsuit.  It was probably funnier for TheBloke (TM) who could just hear, "Oh, sorry, was that your..? Oops."  Turns out it was indeed her oops.

The food was very good in general though it was a really weird experience not to know exactly what you were eating - or indeed how big the portions were.  It was hard to know if I felt full or not when I couldn't see how much I'd eaten.  Some of the meat was a bit fatty, and I feel tricked that they made me eat black pudding as that's never something I'd touch under the cold light of day.  Having said that, it didn't taste as bad as I thought it would.

When Trevor finally led us blinking into the light, we both felt quite dizzy for a few seconds.  Then we were taken through the menu of what we'd actually eaten.  We'd got most of it right, save for a few surprises of things we probably wouldn't have guessed, such as venison and celeriac.

So the big question?  How old am I?  Well, I've got to that age where I either graciously refuse to answer such an impertinent question... or else I just lie.  Suffice to say that if MTV were making a TV programme about my birthday, it would not just be Super Sweet but rather Super Super Sweet Sweet.

Perhaps TheBloke (TM) took me to a pitch black restaurant so he didn't have to look at my massive wrinkles.  Oh yes, we had a lovely evening at a fairly exclusive restaurant that he'd planned in advance for ages, but clearly his motives were all about my haggard sagging face.  I'm going to have words with him tonight.  The twat.