Last Updated on February 22, 2024

Dining in the dark

Dans le Noir? on Clerkenwell’s St John Street describes itself as offering “A unique sensory and human experience”. The concept is simple – this is a restaurant where you can experience eating a surprise menu of gourmet food in the pitch darkness. I was intrigued to go along and try it out.

We were welcomed by the staff at Dans le Noir? who explained how things were going to unfold. Meanwhile, they safely locked away all belongings that could emit light, including our phones and watches. Suitably briefed, we were introduced to our waiter and guide for the evening – all of the staff who work in the restaurant are blind or partially sighted. We were then led single file, hands on each other’s shoulders, into the “dark side”. 

Only once we’d sat down at our table in the pitch-black room, my companion admitted that she is afraid of the dark. She coped admirably and devoted some time trying to work out the dimensions of the room and where the walls might be in relation to where we were sitting. We will never know.

It’s pretty strange writing a review of a meal without giving away what we ate. The next menu change is not until the end of May so I really wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise for anyone else. The food offering is fairly straightforward. There are three different “surprise” menus available at Dans le Noir consisting of two, three or five courses. When you book you’re asked about your dietary requirements and food allergies and everyone from omnivore to vegan is catered for. 

We dined on the mid-level three-course meal consisting of starter, main and pudding and a glass of matched wine, which was all filling and delicious. The five-courser sounds very tempting too if you have a big appetite as it involves two mains plus a cheese plate. 

The whole experience can be quite sociable as anyone who’s seen the About Time can tell you, as Dans le Noir? plays a vital part in the film. Our waiter introduced us to the people at the neighbouring table by name and, later, when a large group arrived to celebrate a birthday we all sang along to Happy Birthday. It is quite weird but interesting interacting with people whose appearance and even whereabouts in a room are a complete mystery.

Dining in the dark is conducive to good conversation – that is, when you’re not concentrating on prodding at your food and failing to get anything to stay on your fork. We covered all sorts of topics. Number one was a fairly in-depth analysis of what we might be eating. This was harder than it sounds and we both agreed that we must usually “eat with our eyes”. 

None of the food photos accompanying this review represents what we ate in the dark but are good representations of the sorts of dishes you can expect at Dans le Noir? Every course was packed with different flavours and textures to challenge our senses – we’re talking crunchy bits, jellies, mousselines, purees, sauces, herbs, spices, you name it. We would only discover after the meal how beautifully presented the dishes are here too.

An example of a dessert at Dans le Noir? We both enjoyed everything we ate.

After dinner, we were led back into the light and said goodbye to our trusty waiter and guide. The final part of the evening involves sitting down in the bar area for a “debrief” with a member of the front-of-house team. Now, this was great fun because we finally discovered exactly what we had just eaten. We were asked what we thought we’d had for each course before the “big reveal” in the form of a menu with descriptions and photos of all the dishes we’d had.

As promised, I’m not going to give too much away but I’ll admit we’d been on completely the wrong track when it came to the meat dish. What we’d eaten had not even come up in conversation let alone been a contender. The fish starter was interesting. My companion had been so adamant that it couldn’t be my first guess because it was something she normally hated (her words not mine), that I’d ended up agreeing with her that it might be swordfish. It turned out that I was right all along and my companion had to admit that perhaps the mystery fish wasn’t so repulsive after all… For both of us, the fruits and vegetables were far easier to identify than the meat or fish.

There are so many elements to the Dans le Noir? experience. I highly recommended a visit to this unique restaurant but perhaps not to super fussy eaters who aren’t willing to be surprised or complete darkness-phobes or people who suffer from claustrophobia. It’s an excellent place to switch off one of your senses, ditch your phone for a couple of hours, give up control and enjoy good food and drink in a completely new way. It’s also a chance to get deep into conversation without many of the usual distractions. 

Prices range from two courses without wine for £52 through to the five-course menu we mentioned earlier which comes with two glasses of wine for £110

Dans le Noir
​​69-73 St John Street,
Clerkenwell
London
EC1M 4AN