Blind Restaurant, Seoul

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This blog will be light on food porn and photos in general as dining in the dark doesn't really give you many photo opportunities. I had wanted to do this ages ago, but couldn't really find any info about it on the web. A friend recently mentioned it and I went off in search again and this time found loads of information. My friends were up for it, so I went online to book on the restaurant's website. The online reservation form is all in Korean, but one of my co-workers checked that I had filled it out correctly and then I transferred the money, you have to pay for the food and drinks before you go to the restaurant. There's a section on the website to check that your reservation is completed. I didn't know that and was freaking out because I hadn't heard anything, but one of my co-workers showed me it, and saved the day.

When I printed out the reservation there was a great map for us to follow to get to the restaurant. The restaurant is situated in the Konkuk University area, it's like a mini Hongdae. We headed out of exit two (I think) of the subway and it was about a five to ten minute walk up the street. The street was heaving, there are loads of shops and also food and tarot stalls lining the street. My idea of hell! No where to walk and too many people. The restaurant is well signposted and we waited for Yeri to arrive.

We headed into the restaurant, which is in the basement of the building. The waiting area was bit ghetto. We stored our bags, coats, and phones in the lockers that they provide. You are not allowed to take anything that will give off light inside. Our reservation was for 7pm, but they tell you to arrive around 6:40 as you have to dump all your stuff in the lockers and use the bathroom before you go into the dining area. The guy (owner?) in the waiting area told us that each day they have a different theme and that today's theme was underwater. He also said that people can feel dizzy and nauseous in the dark and that the best thing to do is to close your eyes.

Yeri volunteered for us to go first and we were lead through to the dining area. The server made us line up and we had to put our hands on the person in front's shoulders, trust a shorty like me to behind a tall person like Chuck. It was pitch black in the restaurant, we were guided to our table and the server helped us to sit down. She gave us some basic instructions about our table. We had to put our hand on the edge of the table and find our cutlery, which was where our right hand should roughly be and our food would be placed to the left, and our water glasses were above our cutlery.

Our starters were already on the table, so after much groping to get our cutlery and finding our plates, we dug in. The underwater theme had also started as they were playing 'The Little Mermaid' soundtrack. We had a right good laugh, trying to eat our starter. It was a kind of salad, green pepper and mushroom, that was all I could really identify. The vegetables were all kind of julienned and cold, they didn't really have any sauce on them. I expected my senses of taste and feel to be heightened, but they were really. I suppose I paid more attention to the texture of my food, if anything. I was so undignified eating my food. I ended up using my fingers for a lot of it because it was easier. And I didn't want to miss any scraps. I hate wasting food. I bet the servers were having a right laugh at us, as we groped around in the darkness and used our fingers. We were also all dancing along to the music in our seats.

The waitresses came over with our drinks, we had all ordered wine or beer. We all managed to get our drinks without knocking them over and spilling them. Success! We were then given our next course, which was pasta. That was a real joy to eat in the dark! Spaghetti has to be one of the most difficult foods to eat in general and here we were doing it in the dark! The spaghetti tasted good, it was in a cream sauce with bacon and mushrooms. After eating all the pasta, I spooned up the sauce, making sure I didn't miss a drop.

At one point, Chuck freaked me out saying that one of the servers was standing behind me and he could see the red light flashing on their night vision goggles. I felt like the server was one of the dementors from Harry Potter, swooping down to get me. I bet there wasn't even anyone there. It was weird in the dining room, because you could hear other people's conversations but they weren't too loud, so we were wondering how the place was set out. Next up, was the salad, that was fine, just lettuce leaves in dressing and a cherry tomato.

An audio recording kept interrupting 'The Little Mermaid' soundtrack and chuntering on in Korean. Yeri translated it for us, but for the most part, it wasn't very interesting. One good thing that the voice suggested we do was play a Korean game called 'Cham, cham, cham' (at least I think that was what it was called). To play the game you need two players and one person puts their hands together in front of the other's forehead. Then after saying "Cham, cham cham!" Both players have to move their hands or head. If the person with their hands forward knocks the other oerson's head, they win and if they don't manage it, the other is the winner. We had a laugh playing that before our main course arrived.

For our main course we had chicken in some kind of sauce. The sauce was slighty spicy and sweet. The chicken was breast meat and still had the skin on. It was served with a slice of mushroom and some roasted garlic. It was nice and I did use my fingers to check that I hadn't left anything on my plate. It was great to be able to lick my finger and nobody see. So uncouth, but so good. As we were finishing up the compere came on and started reading love letters that other tables had written. This is mainly a place where couples go on dates, so they were celebrating anniversaries and declaring their love for each other. It got a bit tedious after the first one, and we were taking the piss. I bet the couples on their romantic dates hated us!

Our dessert was a simple bowl of ice cream and we polished it off. Just before we left we were given some paper and pens, that we could write on. We had a good laugh trying to write in the dark and I had totally misjudged and my writing fell off the table and when I went to join it up I didn't know if I was in the right place. We had a good laugh trying to guess what each other wrote. The staff then came over and whisked our sheets of paper away. Then they lead us out of the dining area. We were given some lollipops and had our photo taken around a table, recreating the dining experience. They told us that the photo and our notes would be available the next day on the website for us to view and download.

Stepping out of the dining room hadn't been to hard on my eyes to adjust to the light. On the journey home I definitely felt drained. I think it was partly due to my busy weekend, and due to the huge amount of concentration that went into eating dinner. You couldn't really relax and my eyes never really adjusted to the dark, it felt like they were working overtime (this may be in part due to the eye surgery I had at the end of December, and the healing process isn't complete, so maybe the strain was too much for them) and I had them closed a lot of the time while eating dinner as it felt more comfortable. Anyway it was a unique experience and I'm glad I did it.

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Photos

Through The Door...
...To The Darkness