Dark Table's blind dining promises to turn dinner into a sensory treat

Calgary is about to get a dining experience unlike any other.

Starting Wednesday, it takes place at The Dark Table, the city's first permanent blind-dining restaurant.

For owner Moe Alameddine, who appeared on the Calgary Eyeopener on Monday, diners shouldn't fret too much about not being able to see their meals.

Instead, they should revel in the way that losing the use of one sense enhances all the other ones.

"You don't eat with your eyes," said Alameddine, "you use your [sense of] smell, your taste. It's a completely unique dining experience."

Building a blind-dining empire

The Calgary restaurant will be the latest in a growing empire of blind-dining eateries for Alameddine, who first launched The Dark Table in Montreal in 2006.

Since then, Alameddine has expanded his growing blind-dining empire to Toronto, Vancouver and now Calgary.

(While The Dark Table is a first for the city, theatre fans got a taste of the blind-dining experience in 2015, when Ghost River Theatre presented Taste, a blindfolded meal that incorporated storytelling into the sensory enhancement, at the River Cafe as part of Beakerhead.)

Diners assisted by 'guide servers'

The blind-dining experience doesn't begin in darkness, explained Alameddine.

"You first come in and the hostess will greet you in a lit area, a bar area," he said."They give you the menu. You choose the items on the menu and then we'll call the server, who are blind people who are going to serve you. We call them guide servers."

The guide servers provide logistical guidance for diners, leading them into the darkened dining room — as well as taking them to the washroom and waiting to escort them back to their tables.

Servers also assist diners to where their knife and fork are located, and also help them locate their wine glass, so that there's no accidental spillage.

Oversized tables

If it all sounds like a food fiasco waiting to happen, Alameddine said that's not necessarily so.

"We give you enough space to move around," he said. "It's not a tiny little table. The tables are pretty big, so you have enough space to move around your stuff."

While Dark Table patrons have the option of ordering their three-course meal at the bar prior to descending into darkness, Alameddine says the option exists to experience a surprise meal.

"We actually have a very popular meal as a surprise dish," he said. "But you can have other dishes, so you can have steak, you can have chicken, you can have the vegetarian dish. And you can have surprise meal all the way — drinks, food — [if] they want to go all the way with the experience."

With files from the Calgary Eyeopener

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