In the dark
Last Friday night, I went ‘dining in the dark’ with three of my lovely lady friends. We were out celebrating Miss H’s last days of being an unmarried lady. We started off in a civilised manner taking in a cocktail or two at The Zetter and catching up on a little gossip.
We then moved onto Dans Le Noir in Clerkenwell Green, and greeted by a charming French waitress who laid down the rules – all bags and coats in lockers and nothing that could emit any sort of light was allowed! We were guided down an increasingly dark corridor by our rather chirpy Italian waiter ‘Roberto’ into a completely pitch black room. Pitch black.
We eventually made it to our table and I have to say I was feeling really rather claustrophobic – you literally couldn’t see a damned thing. It was a very odd feeling indeed. Gripping onto my knife and fork for dear life, I focused on listening to the ladies chatter away about weddings and the like until I got over my initial panic.
But then the food arrived. We had each chosen a different ‘surprise’ menu and I had gone for the meat option, thinking that the fish could have gone either way. Carrie of course had the vegetarian option and Claire as the future bride was given the ‘surprise’ menu.
Lumps of meat. With a couple of bits of limp vegetable of some kind. That was it. And it was bloody expensive. If you’d been asked to pay this kind of money for the same food in the light you would have been absolutely horrified. You are 100% paying for the experience, and nothing more. It’s just a shame that the ‘experience’ is pretty rubbish. There is a huge opportunity here for the chefs to tease and delight the taste buds, and it is an opportunity that is completely missed.
