In the Chrisitian Science Monitor, Amelia Thomas recently wrote about
Dining in the Dark at London's Dans Le Noir restaurant. In my piece on
Montreal's O.Noir restaurant I discussed the whole "dark dining" concept which is taking off.
In Thomas' piece on the London restaurant, I found many of the same observations revealed, and themes echoed in other
dark dining experiences. Even the simple epiphany that the blind servers become guides for the temporarily "blind" patrons. How difficult to feel a new dependency, when we value so highly such things as competence and independence.
Recently, I was reminded of this experience at Boston's Plum Produce (a recently opened, gorgeous little boîte of a produce store.) Customer after customer picked up a vial of dark green powder and asked what it was. I too had smelled the familar scent of the powder, and struggled to reconcile what I saw first, then smelled. My vision told me this was a dried, powdered dark green vegetable. Spinach? Kale?
The vial held powdered
celery. The familiar scent was confirmed with one more whiff, then the recognition that our vision and our routine ways of reconciling information actually impeded our abiltiy to correctly identify what we knew to be true.
This is the essence of Chef Ferran Adria's mission, too, I believe. His goal, and those of many his followers, is to present familiar flavors and foods in wholly unfamiliar ways so that we are unjaded again and able to experience things
"with fresh eyes."
"Dark dining" or "molecular gastronomy" or a simple bit of powdered vegetable (just imagine the pumpkin powder for gnocchi?!) We can experience a sense of child-like wonder about foods once again.
Allons-y!
