Deborah Baic/The Globe and Mail
Snooty French maître'd? Old school. Hot waitresses in short skirts? A limiting cliché. When they decided to come up with a gimmick for their new restaurant, Ian Martinez and Moe Alameddine thought outside the box. Their concept: Eating in the dark. And by dark, they do not mean hard to see. They mean the kind of absolute blackness you would get if you were blindfolded and then dropped into the bottom of a coal mine.
At O.Noir, diners depend on their waiters for more than food. Without them, you will never find your table, the bathroom or the doorway. Strangely enough, the concept has worked. Since opening in Montreal nearly three years ago, O.Noir has boomed, attracting thousands of diners.
Now Mr. Martinez and his partner are bringing the black hole restaurant concept to Toronto, opening a second O.Noir on Church St. (They plan to open June 24.) And in anticipation of the most commonly asked question: There are no candles. And no cheating: Diners must surrender any and all light-emitting devices, including cellphones and watches (which are locked away in a safe.)
"It's a unique experience," Mr. Martinez says. "When you take away sight, the other senses are elevated."
Building a lightless restaurant calls for different thinking. The Montreal restaurant, which is at street level, uses heavy theatrical drapes and strategically placed walls to shut out the light. The new Toronto establishment has an advantage: It's in the windowless basement of a hotel. But even that doesn't guarantee the inky blackness that O.Noir requires.
Because light can leak through even the tiniest hole, construction crews have spent the past few weeks patching. The entrance to the three dining rooms are like air locks, with an inner door that blocks light from the hallway when the outer one is opened. "It's got to be sealed," Mr. Martinez says.
The problems inherent to the concept were worked out long ago at the original Montreal restaurant. Details such as how to read menus and process payments in pitch blackness were easily solved: Customers look at the menu in a dimly lit entranceway, and are then led into the dining room by waiters who act as human seeing-eye dogs. Payment is made back in the entranceway after the meal.
Then there was the matter of training waiters, who found themselves in a position that might be compared to a submarine captain trying to navigate a deep-sea labyrinth without sonar. The answer came from creative thinking: Instead of teaching experienced waiters to work blind, they would teach blind people to be waiters.
Mr. Martinez and Mr. Alameddine recruited at the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, hiring people who are either completely blind, or so visually impaired that they were forced to take advantage of their other senses. The idea worked - the blind waiters learned to navigate the restaurant almost instantly. "For them, it's business as usual," Mr. Martinez says.
For obvious reasons, the kitchen is fully lit, and staff there are not blind. Food is carried to the door of the dining room by runners, who pass the plates to the waiters. Diners are served with a careful protocol: The waiter taps them on the shoulder, then delivers the plate over their right shoulder. Dirty plates are taken away over the left shoulder.
Mr. Martinez says diners are invariably surprised by the experience of dining blind. "They taste the food more and they hear the conversation better," he says. Some find that their inhibitions are reduced: Staff occasionally find items of clothing when the lights are turned on for cleaning after the restaurant empties out - what happens in the dark, stays in the dark.
Mr. Martinez and Mr. Alameddine were inspired to open their pitch-black restaurant after reading about a blind Swiss pastor who liked to host dinner parties. In 1999, the pastor began blindfolding guests to show them what it was like to be blind and to encourage the hiring of visually impaired people.
As Mr. Martinez learned, the unemployment rate among those who are visually impaired runs to 70 per cent or more, but O.Noir provides a venue where they excel.
Although he has perfect vision himself, Mr. Martinez says years of navigating through his blacked-out restaurant have given him "new powers." At first, he banged into every chair and table. Now, he can glide through a dark room as if he were guided by an invisible wire, stopping inches away from an unseen wall. "I know it's there," he said. "I'm a bit of a bat now."