I’m a bit shocked and appalled with myself for not yet posting about O.Noir, the amazing restaurant I went to, or shall I say experienced, in Montreal. When anyone asks me about the trip, this is the first and most frequent thing mentioned during that conversation.

O.Noir is located on Ste-Catherine West in Montreal. Monday–Friday, there are two dinner service times: 17:45pm(that’s 5:45) and/or 21:00pm(that would be 9:00–they do military time in Montreal). Guests are told to make reservations and do not arrive too early–anyone that arrives more than 30 minutes before their reservation time will have to wait outside. Why, you ask?

Well, at O.Noir, you eat in complete darkness.

The routine is this: once your entire party is there, the hostess(stationed in the lobby/”lit” area) explains what will happen and how to order your food. You are also instructed to put all purses, bags, cellphones, and/or anything else that lights up in one of the lockers on the wall. You give her the order in the lobby and shortly after, she assigns a waiter to your table. She gives you their name. If you need anything during the dinner, you simply call the waiter’s name loudly, and they will come to assist you. At Noir, the wait staff is blind.

Yes, you eat in the complete darkness, and the wait staff is blind. Amazing, n’est-ce pas? Mais oui. You have no idea.

You create a train with your party and the waiter–you put your hand on the left shoulder of the person in front of you. The waiter leads you to your table, and it is dark. A dark very similar to the shade of your bedroom at night, right after popping the light off. The only difference? In a bedroom at night, your eyes will eventually adjust. At Noir? Your eyes fight and fight to adjust, but never can. The place is absolute darkness.

I found myself tearing up as soon as our waiter(named Fae) lead me to my seat at the table. I felt overwhelmed by the intensity of the moment–stepping into a world that I’ve never had to experience before. We had five people in our party, yet I could’ve been sitting at the table alone. I had no sense of where the other people at my table were–I could only roughly guess by the direction of their voices.

Let me stop here and post a video from the restaurant’s website, filmed in 2008 I do believe:

The food was absolutely delicious. Even if I did have to eat a good deal of it with my hands. We couldn’t stop remarking on how great everything smelled(especially the shrimp and the coffee).

There’s a funny thing that happens when your brain cannot use a sense it is used to having. Your brain will learn to re-wire itself, re-route impulses. A good example of this: the blind using the sense of touch to read(braille). The re-routing of impulses to compensate for the lack of a sense happens quite naturally, and quite quickly. Another thing that happens when one sense is snuffed out: your other senses feel extra sensitive and heightened. For instance, sound. Everything seemed incredibly loud in the restaurant. We had no visual picture of the table we were sitting at, therefore we could not tell how far apart we were during conversation. To compensate for this, we found ourselves nearly yelling to answer a simple question or repeat a statement. It grew to be kind of tiresome. They also had a jazz band playing, which helped tremendously. I felt incredibly tied to that part of the room–I think they were to my immediate left, behind me a bit. I knew the title to every piece they played(including Van Morrison’s “Moondance”). I felt really comforted by music.

That was the most interesting, startling part about the experience for me. How isolated I felt during most of it. You are in complete darkness. It doesn’t matter how much you can hear around you, or who is sitting at your table or if you are in the middle of conversation–there was something very personal and singular about that. Something, obviously, that I’m having a hard time properly explaining. There is a world in a world in a world, and I learned that within each of our senses is a world presented to us. Take one away and the world changes into another one. Without sight, all movement became more important–actually, all my movements had to have purpose. I no longer talked with my hands while speaking. When I wasn’t talking or eating or reaching for something, they were in my lap. That was another favorite part–the relationship you develop with your waiter. Anytime Fae served us, we would have to reach for what he was giving out, and hands would always touch when grabbing hold. It’s strange yet completely beautiful and amazing to develop a trust like that with someone. Without sight, I listened to everything. I listened to the handful of conversations around us(which honestly seemed like thousands of people conversing at once). I listened to the band(oh how I tethered my ears there); I listened for our waiter coming and going(the waiters repeat a single word or syllable as they move throughout the room–each waiter uses a different one…so when I would hear Fae I could easily announce, “Oh here comes Fae”). I listened to my own breathing and clicking and chewing. Without sight, every aroma grew neon. My god, the smell of the coffee as Fae brought us cups of it post-dessert. We all remarked on it. We also agreed that the taste of the food would stick with us probably more than anything.

Although for me, I will remember most the initial sitting down, that overwhelming wave of emotion and my eyes tearing up, my eyes straining to adjust and finding nothing to adjust to. And how quiet, inward, and alone I felt in the midst of all of it. Of course, it’s hard to capture it all here, but feel free to ask me more questions if you’re interested(or if I haven’t already talked your cilia off about it).

If you’re ever in Montreal, I highly recommend this place. A percentage of their profits are given to local associations that serve the blind and visually-impaired.