Dinner in complete darkness is engaging the senses of Berliners. Derek Scally sampled the fare
If you are what you eat, what are you when you can't see what you're eating? That's just one of the questions that crossed my mind when the lights went out at the Berlin restaurant, Abendmahl (Holy Communion).
It wasn't a power failure: the lights were going to remain extinguished for the next two hours. I was a guest at the "Dinner in the Dark", a dining experience with a difference. In a split second, the 40 dinner guests who had been chatting and eyeing each other nervously, were now sitting in complete, silent blackness. Even my normally chatty dinner date, the Blonde, has nothing to say.
The sound of a beating heart over the sound system does little to calm our nerves. "Welcome to a voyage through the senses," says an unearthly voice as invisible waiters whisk around in the dark.
After a few, uncomfortable moments, the room is suddenly filled with the sound of conversation. Everyone is talking much louder than normal, I notice. Then, just like on a school trip, a few jokers decide to be brave and start making animal noises.
"You'd never think we were in a room full of Germans with this racket," says the Blonde from England, slurping from her wine glass.
The lights have only been out for five minutes and already people are shedding their inhibitions like clothes at a nudist colony. The couple at the next table have started to suck face and I am surprised when I hear myself muttering in their direction: "Get a room."
Everyone is getting used to the darkness when the food starts to arrive and the dinner is, for want of a better word, an eye-opener. I can see neither my hand nor my fork in front of my face. The starter, a salad, comes and goes in what seems like a moment. I taste lettuce and pine seeds and vinaigrette.
Then the main course arrives and a quick poke of the food with my finger - check your table manners at the door - reveals tagliatelle. Curses! The main course is whisked away by invisible hands and the dessert arrives, a delicious ice cream of indescribable flavours. Musicians entertain us in the dark with suitably dark melodies.
Things are just getting cosy when the lights come on again, and everyone sits in dazed silence for a few seconds before half the diners make a semi co-ordinated dash for the bathroom. Two chefs in white make their way around the room showing those without bursting bladders what we've all just eaten. There are few surprises: I had a fairly good idea all along of what I was eating and, to be honest, I found eating by touch much less difficult than I had anticipated.
Despite the light, nobody is rushing from the restaurant, instead everyone is chatting - at a normal volume again - though one group sitting near the door is unusually quiet. They are all members of Heart Connections, a "singles event organiser". Nadine, the organiser, is trying to cheer up her glum charges: one man, wearing a sweater that was probably knitted by his mother, sitting among half a dozen bored women.
"Eating in the dark is a great idea. You learn more about the person you're with because you talk a lot more, it's your only way of communicating," said Katrin Kramp, one of the single women out for the night.
The idea has taken off in Berlin in the last months. One restaurant across town employs only blind waiters, an interesting idea in this European Year of People with Disabilities.
A third restaurant has modified the concept into a "Blind Date Dinner", where men and women spend the evening chatting with an assigned partner whom they only see for the first time after dessert. With more than a third of Berlin's three million citizens officially single, the city's lonely hearts are willing to try nearly anything.
"The first 10 minutes in the dark gave me the creeps," admits Maxi Weiss, another single woman at the dinner.
"It'd be great for a blind date gone bad, though. You could get up and leave, the man would think you'd just gone quiet but boy would he get a shock when the lights went on again."
• Blind Date Dinner - Abendmahl Restaurant - Muskauerstrasse 9 10997 Berlin - www.abendmahl-berlin.de
