A visit to Paris’ Dans Le Noir? Restaurant
By Elyse Weingarten

On a side street, within walking distance from the Georges Pompidou center in the trendy Beaubourg section of Paris, rests the tiny, but notable restaurant, Dans Le Noir?. Since its July 2004 opening, Dans Le Noir? has become implausibly successful in its presentation of an almost silly idea: diners eat in complete darkness, led by a blind wait staff. During the last eight months, co-founders Edouard de Broglie and Etienne Boisrond have watched what was once considered an unmarketable, crazy proposition become an object of unceasing journalistic scrutiny, a popular place for thrill-seeking, soul -searching tourists and Parisians locals, and a forum for opening discussion about topics such as the role of ethics in big business and the domination of sight over the other senses.

Outside, the restaurant is easy to miss. On a street lined with private boutiques and galleries, the only warning is a plaque that reads: Dans Le Noir? Restaurant, with the hours of operation listed underneath. The door to the restaurant is wooden and heavy and usually closed. Inside, the establishment opens into a modest foyer, dimly lit with a bar and several chairs. People line up in this area, holding on to the shoulders of the person in front of them, as a blind guide leads into the pitch-black dining area. In the dining room, the guides work to show each diner how to pour a beverage, use silverware and eat as blind people do.

However, Dans Le Noir is careful to offer more than the gimmicky, proverbial morale of the blind leading the blind, however literally. Ideally, a dialogue begins between the diners and the blind guide. And ideally, each diner will reexamine the domination of sight, relearning to experience the taste of food and the company of others in a different way. Behind the establishment of Dans Le Noir remains a complex commitment to ethics. The restaurant’s founders, Broglie and Boisrond, are also the co-founders of Ethik Investment, a company that explores how businesses can maintain their ethical obligations while continuing to make a profit. When opening Dans Le Noir?, Broglie and Boisrand had hoped to open up a place in Paris that was ethical in the sense that people would feel different after the experience. They hoped to be able to teach people to understand themselves and other people better. They also wanted to add value to something social. Working closely with the Paul Guinot Association for Blind people, Dans Le Noir? has been able to help the blind community in Paris. They offer safe, permanent and stable employment for the blind, a remarkable achievement when statistics show only around 30% of blind people have jobs, even when many more than that have higher degrees.

	Dans Le Noir?'s Website
Dans Le Noir? 51, rue Quimcampoix 75004 PARIS (33) 01.42.77.98.04

It was these poetic profusions that drew me to Dans Le Noir?. Dans Le Noir? rests on the assumption that we, as humans, create order with our eyes and when we loose our sight, we are thrown into confusion. We will allow ourselves to do things in the dark that society dictates against, even in an activity as simple as eating. A Unique Human Experience!, it’s advertisements read in English. More than anything, Dans Le Noir? is a staging, a mise en scene that promotes self exploration and provides opportunity to ethically engage The Other. But also, to the ethics of the restaurant, to know thy self is as important as know thy neighbor. It is theater of the absurd at its finest.

“The way you taste food [at Dans Le Noir?] is different. In reality, most of the time you eat food with your eyes. You are going to eat [something] and say to yourself that it tasted good maybe because it looked good. Here, you taste things for what they taste like, not for what they look like.” Dan Le Noir’s public relations representative Sarah Cluzel explained to me. When we met for an interview, we decided to talk in the dark dining room. Leaving my bag and coat in a locker, I grabbed my tape recorder, and held her shoulders as we entered into the dining room. “When you are in the dark, you are alone with yourself in a way. You can completely relax, you can close you eyes if you want to close your eyes, you can sit the way you want to sit … there is no one looking or judging you.”

Sitting at the table, I laughed with Sarah at how someone could pick their nose, put their head on the table, almost lay down—all this going unnoticed. I was curious if Sarah noticed a difference in the way people related to each other once they were in the dark. I couldn’t help but wonder if the darkness imposed its own rules of isolation. Sarah surprised me by offering another, perhaps too-eager, interpretation. She said that more honest and real interactions are able to develop as the distraction of personal appearance disappears. “Communication in the dark is very interesting because it [becomes] completely spontaneous, ” she noted.

Dans Le Noir? special events and entertainment in the dark:

Single’s DatingNight
Organoleptic Discovery – oenology courses, harmony of wines and cheeses, blind tests for new food products
Zen Lunches for Working People - relaxing lunch for working people with massage and soft music
Music in the Dark
Cultural Café - conferences, debates, philosophical discussions, and readings by famous writers

In my own personal experience, what Sarah said about conversations occurring more spontaneously in the dark was correct. Through out the duration of our interview, I felt frantic and unorganized, unprepared without my notes, unsteady in my capacity to maintain a logic to our interaction. I was obsessively worried that the tape-recorder would be knocked over without my constant surveillance (which, as it turns out, is exactly what happened). And while at first the dark made me feel dizzy, it later made me very tired and giddy. I would spout out whatever thought came into my head, too distracted to worry how it came together. At the same time, I was bitterly resentful. Despite the fact that I was more spontaneous, was I really being more honest? In a sense, I felt that the “me” that was being presented wasn’t real. I felt like I wasn’t appearing as intelligent or organized as I would have under normal circumstances. I was at once naked to the bone, but wearing someone else’s body. However, I was also in a professional capacity. I have no idea how I would respond if I were in a more relaxed, social setting.

After the interview, Sarah left me to dine alone. A server, who I will call Sagesse (a beautiful French name which means wisdom) came to help me. She brought water, and showed me how to stick my finger in the glass to measure it. This worked well when she was standing behind me (I knew she was there, although I couldn’t see her), but I had a little less luck the second time and spilt water on the table. When Sagesse brought my bread, I was relieved. I was starving, and because I knew that no one could see me, I crammed a piece of bread in my mouth and crudely washed it down with the water. Normally, I am embarrassed to eat the free bread that comes on the table. But in the darkness, my shame evaporated and I proceeded to eat what I imagine was almost the whole basket. Sagesse then brought my entrée. She handed me the fork and the knife, and tried to show me how to use them. When I put the knife down later, I was unable to find it again and ate with my fingers and the fork. The food was delicious. It was all over my hands and my mouth. I tasted a million things all at once—fish? bread? cheese? Crispy bread crust? I began to eat quickly in a manner that can only be described as devouring. I felt the texture of the food as fleshy and that too seemed delicious. After a while, I began to hesitate, worried that I was making too much noise. My hands and face was covered in food. How badly have my table manners slipped up? Have I been smacking my lips? Just because people can’t see you, doesn’t mean they can’t hear you. Meanwhile, because it was during the Zen Lunch, Sagesse kept trying to give me a back massage, and I kept removing her hands, although I don’t know why. The innocence of the gesture was too excruciatingly intimate. To be touched by someone you don’t know in the dark ... someone who will never see you.

“Suppressing the dominant sense of sight, each person naturally starts a deep self questioning.”
- from the Dans le Noir? press packet

I could hear a man and woman sitting very close to me. I spoke to them briefly in my beginner’s French, before I gave in and spoke English. It felt strange to speak with people without seeing them, and I resisted asking them what they look like. Are they old? Good looking? Are they lovers? Or just friends? The man told me that he comes to Dans Le Noir? about once a month, bringing a friend every time to partake in the experience. This is his gift to them. “Of course, it’s not actually like being a real blind person, ” he explained. “But it is really good to experience the other senses.”

After Sagesse led me back into the foyer, Sarah told me what I had eaten. It was a spinach, goat cheese and tomato tart. I have always had this strange psychological aversion to tomatoes and when she told me that I had eaten one, and I realized that I liked the taste, I imagine I had a moment of self disgust similar to if she told me that I had eaten dog. And while I consider goat cheese among my favorite foods, I couldn’t taste it at all! I would have sworn that I was eating fish. After saying good-bye to Sagesse, I asked Sarah if was important to the integrity of the establishment that the guides be blind people rather than specially trained sighted people. She answered with a blunt practicality, rather than with philosophy or ethics, surprising me, once again. “Yes. The first reason is that you can’t have someone sighted in the dark for five hours because they would go crazy. Also, who better than blind people to guide you in the dark? It would be stupid to employ sighted people!” In addition, Sarah pointed out how important this job is for the self of the blind person. At the restaurant, “there is the reversal theory: you trust blind people to guide you in their world. Where as, usually, this is what they do all day long: they trust people even when they have to cross the street.”

Most people leave Dans Le Noir? feeling profoundly affected. When I left Dans Le Noir?, I felt refreshed, accelerated, but I can’t honestly say that it was a life altering experience. The most that had been revealed to me about myself was that I secretly like tomatoes, although I haven’t yet eaten another since. But now, in writing this, I remember and am amazed at the experience. I intend to go back and to do it all again, this time with a friend, and not for work, but for me.

Images Courtesy Dans Le Noir?