By snoadmin
Pitch black. That’s all I could “see” for nearly two hours while dining in the darkness of Opaque restaurant. Here, under the guidance of blind, yes, blind or visually-impaired servers, customers undergo the full experience of eating as if they were completely blind themselves.
The Sunset Strip is home to dozens of luxurious high-end restaurants, which rely on competitive design and celebrity-hype for business. Opaque, however, located within the trendy Hyatt hotel on Sunset Boulevard, could quite possibly have the ugliest interior ever to be packed with famous Hollywood elites, and customers would never know or get the chance to see it. Without any light, the dining room isolates customers in their own nocturnal wonderland.
Prior to entering the black abyss, my party of six selected our choice of entrée from the menu and were then greeted by our server. His name was Michael Headley and, yes, he is blind. With careful instruction, we followed Headley one after the other, hands placed upon the shoulder of the person in front. We walked blindly through a maze of fabric, which twists and turns into the dining room, gradually filtering out the light from the outside world.
Once inside, the room was literally pitch black, so black that it was hard to determine whether my eyes were open or closed. A sense of nervous excitement chilled my spine as I heard the panicky chatter of strangers from across the room. Their faces remained a mystery and I had only their voices to help me determine how many people might have been in the room with me.
Food critics and adventure junkies venture to this West Hollywood eatery with the theory that senses, like taste and smell, are heightened when vision is temporarily unachievable. Unfortunately, the heightening of senses did not immediately occur when I began my meal. Instead, my party and I struggled with the concept of eating with the silverware provided. Simple tasks such as cutting a piece of steak, can become significantly more difficult when you cannot see the steak in front of you. Hungry and a bit frustrated, we eventually began to shovel handfuls of delicious filet mignon into our mouths. (It wasn’t like anyone could see.)
Although a relatively new style of eating in Southern California, the dining-in-the-dark phenomenon has been popular in Europe since the late 1990s. In Switzerland, Jorge Spielmann, a blind minister, would blindfold dinner guest in order to have them “see” the world from his viewpoint. Happy with the outcome his guests would have after the experience, Spielmann set out and opened the world’s first dining-in-the-dark restaurant. The aptly named Blind Cow eatery gained much notoriety and the idea spread.
Opaque, its name meaning “not allowing light to pass through,” opened its doors on July 2005 and has become increasingly more popular over the years. An Opaque restaurant opened at the US Grant in San Diego on Aug. 2007 and plans for a San Francisco location are currently underway.
My overall experience at Opaque was exciting. And although pricey (roughly $100 a person, excluding tip) it was well-worth the adventure. You could always turn the lights off at home and do this in your kitchen, but you probably won’t have as much fun.
