Usually, I’d mention a dining experience in passing, but this time I make an exception. Okay, the real reason for my visit to Noire@Fairmont, Dubai was to review the place for a book, but the experience was too good to keep under wraps or wait for the book to be out!
So here goes!
We arrived early – well, with me that’s a given, and soon enough two chaps with night vision goggles perched on their heads gave us a complimentary drink. Why mention this, you ask. This was no ordinary drink – it was a drink-and-tell-kind of drink, so it was really a preparatory test for the taste buds before the actual dinner.
No way you could see what was in the glass and thus have something to help you along, like the colour. Between the two of us, though, we guessed four of the five ingredients – me having guessed (I think) the most difficult one – Passion Fruit.
Okay, that was the easy bit. We waited for the other diners to arrive – yes, this isn’t one of those places where you simply seat yourself at your table – here at Noire, you wait for everyone, go through a round of briefing and then, you are guided into the dark room by those night vision goggle wearing chaps. The fun begins when you get past the first “curtain” and into complete darkness – ZERO LUX (0 lx) would be about the right way to describe it. It doesn’t matter whether your eyes are open or closed – you can see nothing.
Essentially you take baby steps while holding on to the goggled-guys as they effortlessly wind their way through the room and seat you down.
“On your right is the cutlery, on the left is the bread…” and voila, you have suddenly found the use of your hands. Instinctively you stretch out your hands, feeling everything gingerly and realize at once that your fingers definitely a sensory object! Here you feel things – you don’t see them. You feel it with your tongue, fingers, ears, nose…
And suddenly voices rise – no one is keeping to the social etiquette anymore. Nervous giggles and laughter reaches your ear, people jerk around unsure (evident in the falling cutlery).
Fortunately ours was the smallest group of two – and once we had defined the edge of our table and established contact with the glass, bread and cutlery, we settled down to enjoy the public conversation!
Then the starters arrived – I’d guessed it was fish, but not the actual thing – I did taste a lot of Asian ginger though. I’d like to say the ginger ruined it for me for I couldn’t guess what fish was on my plate – but we were the first to finish without mishap – as announced by the goggled-chaps.
Okay, let me jump to conclusions here –
1. Nothing came that required the use of knife (and hence only two sets of fork and spoon)
2. No hot soup
3. No “breakable” drinking glasses
4. Nothing too hot for the main course
5. Food that could be eaten with a fork – no big pieces to worry about.
In the meanwhile, drinks arrived and a palette cleanser before the main course. Again, we guessed wrong. I suppose by this time, we were hoping for some light, because it was really hard to guess (or even imagine) what we were eating.
But hey, that makes you think – just how well do you know your food? In our daily life, do we pay enough attention to the taste rather then the appearance of food? Does the mind tell us it is beef because we are looking at it? Can we tell with our eyes closed?
Because, of the ninety percent of people who said ‘beef’ to the main course were shocked to know it was duck!!
Dinner at Noire is unique. That’s it. It gives an insight into what life without light would be. It tells you that seeing is believing, but it “feeling” is believing as well. Our eating habits are completely defined by what we see rather than what we taste – perhaps we know it in our heads but because we can’t see it, we cannot define it –
I’d say – give Noire a shot. It teaches you the value of life and light.
At the end of our dinner, we were led out and shown what we had just eaten. Embarrassingly, all of us were wrong – or right in parts. Following this, we were given “night vision” glasses and taken back to our tables. Okay, it wasn’t a pretty sight – every table was messy and when we found ours, I wanted to hide. Why? Oh, what I couldn’t taste with my fork, I’d decided to use my fingers – you know, try to guess the food by touch and had wiped my messy hands on the white linen – urrgh, see what I mean?
No dropped cutlery though – saving grace!
Dining in the dark sharpens your senses like you’ve never known before. It’s amazing what darkness can do to your senses.
