Pass the Salt

I’ve just been on my first blind date. The mystery wasn’t the man, it was the meal. We ate in total darkness on Monday night, blindfolded at Capitol Restaurant in Wellington.

The Blind Dining Experience was a fund raiser timed for World Sight Day with proceeds going to cbm – an organisation funding cataract operations in the developing world.

It wasn’t meant to be a comfortable experience but I hadn’t expected to feel quite so disorientated. From the introductory sound of knives being sharpened to the somewhat upsetting experience of missing my mouth with the spoon, my senses were on high alert. Without the visual cues would I be able to guess what I was eating?

The first surprise was the wine – not a white of indeterminate origin with no middle palate and little aroma, but an over-chilled gamay noir. A red.

Then the shot glass of soup, thick with a lemony zest and some odd things floating in it. I thought they may have been tender strips of squid but after rolling them around in my mouth, I correctly guessed whitebait. A rather weird addition to leek and potato soup. I would love to have seen what it looked like.

The deep fried risotto ball (arancini) was an easy one – the stringy mozzarella hiding inside was a dead give away – but how could I have mistaken tender, gelatinous lamb shank for beef cheek? Perhaps because its pastry case made me think of steak and kidney pie. A case of the mind playing tricks with the buds.

I wasn’t the only one struggling. A parmesan crumbed fritter of something strange-but-delicious had the whole restaurant foxed. The ‘something’ was lamb’s liver served on gorgonzola-dressed baby spinach.

Chef Tom Hutchison had designed his menu with the focus on taste and texture. Colour and presentation weren’t important but old habits die hard and he says each dish was, in fact, visually pleasing.

And although it wasn’t intended to be a guessing game, he had obviously had fun with the menu. A dressing of tuna mayonnaise made the soft pork belly taste like canned tuna. So effective was that little trick, I thought the garnish was crispy fish skin, not a paper thin sliver of crackling.

He says he also had to think about how we were going to eat. Shot glasses, Chinese spoons and tart cases were easy to manage, other portions were made for the fingers. This added a whole new dimension, especially as we were more or less eating in private. No one could witness my fingers in the mayonnaise or the shameless way I ripped into a delicious french cutlet. I found myself concentrating entirely on eating, not least because conversation was difficult. Is Capitol always this noisy or is sound amplified in the absence of sight?

The waiting staff could see it all, of course. Were they sniggering? Not a bit of it. We were utterly dependent on them and they couldn’t have been more helpful. They tied napkins around us like baby feeders and told us to raise our hands if we wanted to go to the toilet. It was kind of humiliating.

Like practiced caregivers they were careful not to startle us;  they told us exactly what they were doing as they cleared the table, filled our wine glasses and finally brought out the dessert – the only course that  came with cutlery.  After feeling my way around the plate I remembered my manners and made a game attempt at spooning up the rose-scented candy floss that garnished a delicious semi-freddo.

I did get the light lemon mousse, and the muscat dessert wine was unmistakable, but I couldn’t figure out the chewy little nuggets in the ice cream.  Turkish delight. It should have been obvious but by this time my senses were confused. I’d had enough.

I was relieved to take off the blindfold. Relieved, but also uncomfortable in the knowledge that what for me had been an interesting diversion was for others a permanent disability. Just imagine being left in the dark.