by MARK SLUTSKY

The dark restaurant trend is said to have started in Switzerland in the late ’90s, with the opening of blindekuh in Zürich, as part of a venture to create jobs for the visually impaired. The idea is that patrons—sighted and not—eat in total darkness, served and assisted by waiters with varying degrees of vision loss. The trend soon spread to Australia, London, Los Angeles, Berlin and beyond, and now Montreal has its own in O.Noir, a new venture on Ste-Catherine just across from the Faubourg.

We arrived on a recent Thursday night to find a dimly lit foyer (we greatly appreciated the low intensity of the lamps when we emerged from the dining room after dinner) with a row of lockers to store valuables. Very friendly (and sighted) staff greeted us, presented the menu, and generally showed us the ropes. We waited for our table and perused the printed menus, ordering our prix-fixe meals entirely in advance.

We were then introduced to our server: all waiters at O.Noir are 50–90 per cent visually impaired. They’ve memorized the layout of the dining room in advance, and are generally very effective at guiding customers around—albeit with a lot of cries of “Attention!”, which was a pretty common refrain throughout the meal.

As promised, the dining room was completely dark, albeit with one exception. Safety regulations insist that all exits be marked, so glowing red “sortie” signs are posted at each end of the room. They don’t cast any light themselves, but they’re kind of hard to avoid, peering down like the eye of Mordor. It was really hard to keep my eyes from being drawn to the sign opposite me, which blunted the effect of the darkness.

The food itself isn’t particularly memorable—one of my dining companions compared it to the kind of fare you’d get at a wedding—though there were some standouts. The grilled octopus appetizer was pleasingly fatty and juicy, and I liked the grilled portobello mushrooms with shaved parmesan. The “surprise” appetizer turned out to be a fine smoked salmon plate.

Of the main courses, the veal was tender, if a little slippery, and the grilled chicken, with eggplant and melted cheese, was nothing to write home about. The only really surprising thing about the “surprise” main was that they’d just combined half portions of the veal and the chicken instead of bothering to whip up a new dish.

But it wasn’t really the food that held our attention, but rather our haphazard attempts at eating it. What a weird experience: chasing green beans around the plate with my fork, trying to secure a strip of veal with my teeth so as to position it correctly for cutting, and discovering, after I’d assumed I’d finished the course, that there were still mysterious undiscovered continents of portobello left to explore. Did it enhance the eating experience? Well, I certainly had to pay more attention to the food, but I didn’t find that my senses of taste and smell were all the more enhanced by the setting.

That said, it certainly did make for a fun meal. We all felt pretty giddy when we were first seated; the novelty really was very entertaining, and there was a lot of fun to be had in trying to explore this weird new space. After being there for over an hour, though, a certain pleasant tranquility set in. And overall, accidents were few, the tally coming to one thumb in a pat of butter; one waterfall of salad that ended up on my pants; one forkful of risotto colliding with a shoulder and, just when we thought we were out of the woods, one broken wineglass. Also, one of my dining companions later revealed that after a spill with a piece of octopus he proceeded to strip off his t-shirt and spend the rest of the meal shirtless, which must be some sort of health violation.

TIPS? QUESTIONS? COMPLIMENTS TO THE CHEF? E-mail eattothebeat@gmail.com

O.Noir
ADDRESS: 1631 Ste-Catherine W. (at Guy)
PHONE: 937-9727
HOURS: Nightly sittings at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m., plus lunch
BEST FEATURES: Well, the whole “eating in the dark” thing.
ALCOHOL: Yes
WHEELCHAIR ACCESS: Yes, but it might be a little complicated
VEGETARIAN FRIENDLY: Yes
CREDIT CARDS: Yes
PRICE: $20–$25 per person for lunch, $30–$37 for dinner, before tax, tip and wine
RATING: ** out of ****