Dark Restaurant: Where one eats in total darkness.
The first dark restaurant in Asia is officially opened on the 23 December 2006. This restaurant, located in Beijing, China, has its interior painted completely in black. Customers are greeted by a brightly lit entrance hall and will be escorted by waiters wearing night vision goggles into the pitch dark dining room to help them find their seats. Flashlights, mobile phones and even luminous watches are prohibited while in this area.
The meal will be taken in this environment with the complete loss of vision. By starving one’s sense, your other senses are stimulated to full alert – all so the theory goes – and your food will taste like it’s never tasted before. In case you are wondering about the washrooms, they are all brightly lit.
I’m not sure if I’d be too eager to sign up for this. First of all, it’s pitch dark, so what’s to prevent some perve with a night vision scope from sneaking up and giving you a finger bang against your will? And if something is shaved with truffles and you’re paying $75 for it…how do you really know? Then again, nobody is going to see you if you want to pick up your plate and hoover every last truffle to make sure.
Come to think of it, this would be a concept better suited for, say, a rib joint, so you can go totally atavistic on a bone or a plate of chicken wings without caring a whit about appearances. And truly, whoever smelt it dealt it — no need for a poker face after ripping one.
Click through and check out the masked waiters, who look like (straight out of Blade Runner) industrial designers of frozen, biorobotic Replicant eyes.
