Ladies and gentleman, have any of you seen this article before? I have read
it in the past, and now it surfaces once again. Can you tell me if this is
real or imagined? I have no particular opinion about it, but I can see that
it would make for interesting conversation at the very least.
Thx, Albert
Thx, Albert
By Stephen Moss on a curious culinary
success The Guardian Friday December 8, 2000
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I had dinner in Zurich
this week with three Swiss people and an expatriate Brit. We
sat together and chatted for a couple of hours, but don't ask
me what they looked like. I couldn't see them. Father Christmas
dropped by hal fway through the meal. I tugged him by the
beard, so I knew who it was, but I never saw him either. Or
the waitress, Elizabeth; or the barman; or indeed the bar; or
the 60 or so other customers; or the piano I was sitting next
to; or the food I ate. The room was pitch-black; the serving
staff were blind; an d the diners were, in effect, simulating
total blindness. The restaurant, Blindekuh (Blind Cow, which is
the Swiss equivalent of blind man's buff) has taken
Switzerland by storm. My fellow diners, who had driven up from
Lucerne, had booked four months ago. That wait is not unusual:
weekends are full until April. The restaurant's reputation is now
spreading beyond the Swiss border: American restaurateurs have
been in to assess the possibility of blind dining in the US;
there is talk of franchising the Blind Cow concept across
Europe; and last week the receptionist took a call from a
restaurant owner in Ireland who wanted a precise description of
the restaurant so that he could build one in Dublin. The
premises would, unfortunately for potential imitators, be hard to
replicate. The restaurant is housed in a former Lutheran church,
which perfectly fits this odd mix of philanthropy and
commercialism (it is owned by the Blindlicht Foundation, set up
by a blind clergyman called Jorge Spielm ann to provide
opportunities for blind people). Not all the staff are blind: the
mana ger, Adrian Schaffner, is sighted, as is the receptionist,
and all the kitc hen staff except one. But the dozen or so
waiters (most of whom work part time) are blind, as are some
of the support staff. Blindekuh opened in September last year.
Spielmann's foundation, which raised 3200,000 to launch it,
had a dual purpose: to provide work for blind people, and to
give those who can see an insight into their world. "We hope to
make people more sensitive to the problems of the blind," says
Schaffner. " It's a new experience for diners: you take one
sense away, so you have to u se all the others much more." When
you arrive, your bag and coat are put into a locker - it would
be hazardous to leave anything on the floor of the dining room -
and you step into a dimly lit ante-room which is supposed to
acclimatise you to darkness (occasionally, guests find the
blackness of the dining room too claustrophobic and have to
leave). When your waiter arrives to greet you, you place your
hands on her shoulders and are taken through the blackout
curtain and into the dining room. The blind leading the
blind. The room is not merely dark; it is entirely devoid of
light. The distinction is important: usually in darkness you can
make out shadowy shapes; her e you can see nothing. Your eyes
work furiously to attempt to see something, but in vain, and
the effort is so tiring that you have to close them. In dim
light, they would be straining even harder. The great challenge
in eating blind is conversation. A conversation between sighted
people relies on body language, facial expressions, eye
contact:
the words are just part of the interaction. Blind people
depend to a much greater extent on their voice. "Usually, in a
restaurant, everything is done with your eyes," says
Schaffner, "but here you put that away and suddenly everybody is
the same. The quality of what you say counts: not your designer
tie, not your shoes, not your fashion haircut, not whether you
are beautifu l or ugly, just your voice. If you don't talk, you
don't exist." The restaurant has become a popular venue for blind
dates: couples can meet and see how they get along without the
distractions of what they look like and how they eat. In the
restaurant, couples can stick to essentials; afterwards, in the
lobby, they can check out the aesthetics. The menu is small:
three starters, a meat dish, a fish dish, a vegetarian option,
a couple of desserts. The waiters either memorise what has been
ordered or, for large parties, use a dictaphone. Eating and
drinking is a challenge. Elizabeth encourages me to pour my own
beer, which has to be done carefully, using the index finger of
the left hand to check how full the glass is . You quickly
realise that you have to keep your elbows off the table, a
perception underlined by the sound of a bottle falling to the
floor elsewhere in the restaurant. I have no idea how large
the room is, or how close the tables are together. It can seat
no more than 60, and I was at a table for six, so there are
perhaps a dozen tables. Noise levels are normal (ignore those
who suggest that darkness makes people talk more loudly), and
there is an awkward moment of silence when one of the
revellers on my table makes a lewd remark (perhaps in the dark
everyone is listening more intently). Many large groups come to
Blindekuh: families, office parties, but so far no wedding
receptions (Schaffner thinks the bride would take offence).
Clearly, part of the appeal is bonding: a strange, shared
experience. It is arguable whether this brief, immobile
immersion in darkness gives any real insight into blindness,
but clearly it will make you look (or not look) at your friends,
family, fellow diners in a different way. Eating is messy. I
courageously had borscht to start, which was surprisingly
straightforward once I had located the spoon. But the beef,
dumplings and assorted vegetables were trickier. Most of the
dumplings went on the table, some of the vegetables ended up
on the floor, and cutting meat is almost impossible. The
solution is to abandon social niceties (irrelevant in the dark)
and eat with your hands. There may be something mildly
transgressive in this whole enterprise. In Vladimir Nabokov's
Laughter in the Dark, an unfaithful, gold- digging wife
exploits her wealthy husband's blindness by secretly installing
her lover in their home. The husband's presence heightens the
illicit lovers' passion. Who knows, perhaps my fellow diners
were naked; perhaps Elizabeth was naked; perhaps Santa, behind
that flowing white (I am making assumptions here) beard was
naked. In the kingdom of the blind, the cock-eyed imagination is
king. I curb my wilder fantasies. My sole transgression is to
lick the dish after I've eaten my ice-cream. Does the idea
work? I would be intrigued to go with someone I knew, to see
how the dynamic changed once we were deprived of all the usual
props to conversation. It was difficult to gauge talking to
four total strangers. The restaurant claims that eating blind
makes you think about the food more: you eat more slowly,
sniff the food, touch it, savour it. But that is questionable: I
wasn't aware of the meal being slower, just messier. You do
lose track of time, though: luminous watches have to be
removed, mobile phones are not permitted, welcome to the void.
The challenge will be to retain the purity of the idea,
especially if Blind Cows spring up elsewhere. The Zurich
restaurant works because of the idealism of the founders
(tempered by the management nous of Schaffner, who used to
work for the Best Western hotel chain), the combination of eating
and education (the restaurant also runs intensive afternoon
sessions demonstrating what it is like to be blind), and the
enthusiasm of the staff, especially the blind waiters who
recognise that they have been given a unique opportunity
(imagine, in any other context, the employment potential of a
blind waiter). Trying to repeat the formula elsewhere will be a
leap in the dark.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4102257,00.html
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