Another great suggestion, this time from AC. (She suggested renting a jetski too!)

There’s a restaurant in Toronto called O.Noir. It’s a restaurant where diners eat in complete darkness and all the servers are legally blind. I thought this sounded both fascinating and fantastic, so I immediately added it to my list.

O.Noir is a chain of sorts. The first one started in Europe as an opportunity for blind people to work. There are several of the restaurants across the world, including one in Montreal which is completely separate from the one in Toronto.

The restaurant is essentially in the basement, or lower level, of other buildings. The hallway, bathrooms and lounge area are dimly lit. How it works is you look at the menu and order, either a starter/main/dessert, or two course meal of starter/main or main/dessert.  Once your order is given, you are taken to the door of your room and your server comes to take you in.

Our server was Victor. We met him, then placed left hand on left shoulder as we followed him into complete darkness and were seated at our table. He left to get our drinks while DC and I felt the table cloth, the plate, the warm roll and then across to each other. The butter was in a standard round plastic cup with the tear-off lid, so that was easy to maneuver in the dark.

DC had a ‘surprise’ starter and identified it as a type of salad that included avocado. I had roasted red pepper and goat cheese. For mains, he had shrimp and risotto and I had chicken, potatoes and green beans. I loved my potatoes and realized I hadn’t had them in ages. The chicken was pre-cut which made it easier to eat in the dark.

For dessert, DC had chocolate cake with ice cream and I ordered the ‘surprise.’ This was rather daring since there are many foods I don’t like to eat. While we waited, we started to think of terrible things they might bring me that I would have to swap with DC, who eats anything. He said: What would be the worst thing they could bring you? And I immediately said Trifle! All that fruit and custard. All ingredients I eat but not my favourite dessert. Other things I didn’t want to eat:

Anything coffee-flavoured
Baked goods with raisins in
Raisin pie
Prunes

I got a lovely, standard cheesecake which I enjoyed very much. It was better than DC’s cake, which I know because we managed to pass forks of food to each other in the dark.

And like children we thought it was hilarious to do inappropriate things because nobody could see us.

When we’d finished, we called Victor and he led us back out of the pitch black room. The dimly lit lounge seemed like noontime sunshine for a while! We paid our bill and tried to get a look at the food being delivered to other servers to take to their guests. It looked very appetizing.

What a great experience.