Dining in the Dark Saigon: Unlock Your Senses

“Of the five senses, sight dominates. Take away sight, and our other senses emerge to interpret the world from another perspective. Smell becomes more subtle. Taste becomes more acute. Hearing becomes more sensitive. Touch becomes more delicate. This is not simply dining, but rather a uniquely mind-altering experience where smell, taste, touch and hearing unite to bring you a completely new journey of the senses.” -Noir Dining in the Dark Saigon website

Walking down a curiously quiet alley off a loud street in Ho Chi Mihn, my dinner date, Dave and I are greeted by a tall, well dressed man welcoming us to Nior Dining in the Dark Saigon.

We sit down on a plush, red, crushed velvet couch and are presented with the menu. But you won’t find any actual food items on Noir Dining in the Dark Saigon's menu. No, at Noir you only have three dining options to choose from: #1 from the east; #2 from the west; or #3 vegetarian. Each include an appetizer, main course and dessert. You don’t know what foods are being served to you, not just because they’re not included on the menu, but because you can’t see while you’re eating them.

We decided to go with the “from the east” menu option because, well, when in Vietnam. We inform the host of our dietary restrictions (me no meat or dairy, Dave no radish) and we add a glass of mystery wine to accompany each course. It’s recommended to order the same menu so you can discuss and compare notes about what you think you are shoveling into your mouth. It’s a fun little game to play with your date, in the dark.

To get our minds in the game, the host brings us 2 wooden squares with cut out shapes and corresponding wooden blocks - like the ones toddlers use to develop their brain power. We cover our eyes with the provided blindfolds and get to work. I use a few strategies before I settle on one that seems to work - feeling the cut out shape on the block, and then searching for the wooden block to match. We complete the first task, but that’s nothing compared to eating and drinking while not being able to see.

Into the Darkness

After placing our order with the host and downing our complimentary cocktail in the lobby, we put everything into a locker. They don’t let you bring in phones or any other light-emitting device. They want to make sure the dining room is pitch black for the optimal dining in the dark experience.

We wonder if eventually our eyes will adjust, how much food will I spill? How many wine glasses will I break? A childhood nickname of mine was “the spiller,” and that was in normal lighting. Hopefully I won’t make a fool of myself. But who will see anyway?!

The host introduces us to our server - Huy, a small Vietnamese man in all black. Huy will guide us to our table, serve our meal, and help us if we need anything. If we have a question, need help or require the bathroom, we just yell Huy’s name and he’ll guide us to where we need to go. Oh, and Huy is blind. All the servers at Noir Dining in the Dark Saigon are blind. In addition to a trippy experience, dining in the dark is also an experience in empathy. A tiny, tiny look into what it is to be blind.

Huy tells me to place my hands on his shoulders and Dave places his on mine. Down a few stairs and through a courtyard, we make our way through a black curtain and into the dark. Huy recommends we close our eyes before we go in - this helps with the initial shock of darkness or something. I heed his recommendation.

Hands on shoulders, taking small, shuffling steps, we wind around who knows what (I can’t see!) until Huy tells us to stop. First, he leads Dave to his seat, telling me to stay still, then leads me to mine. Grabbing my hand and placing it on the chair, he tells me to sit down. Task number one is already proving difficult. I have my hand on the back of my chair, but where’s the seat? I imagine myself trying to sit on the chair, only to miss it and feel my ass drop all the way to the floor, bringing the table cloth and glassware down with me. This chair back feels short and wide, is the seat short? What side is the seat on? Is it a long seat? A wide seat? Where is it in relation to the table? How tall is it? I ask all of these questions in my head, just during the simple act of sitting in a chair, when normally I could interpret all of this information in milliseconds by just looking at the chair. I can tell from the beginning, this is sure to be an extra sensory experience.

Sitting securely in my seat, Hue takes my hand and places it on the water glass. Then moves it to the wine glass. He explains the space directly in front of me is empty, to be filled with a delicious three-course meal, and the utensils and napkin are to the right. Hue leaves us to explore our new environment.

Dining in the Dark and Our Senses

Sight

They weren’t lying - it is pitch black. Nothing. I can see the tiniest red dot floating in the air that I assume is the smoke detector, but it isn’t emitting any light, just existing in an ocean of black. I find myself staring at that spot for most of the night for whatever reason. Our eyes did not adjust at all. The whole time we were eating, it was as if our eyes were closed. I had my eyes opened, but Dave let me know mid-meal that he had kept them shut for the most part - it didn’t really matter.

It was absolutely trippy and disorienting, but like most things, the body adjusts. Though, I can imagine someone freaking out and asking to be led out back into the light. Someone who doesn’t like not being in control, not knowing. You feel like you’re in the unknown, without sight, you have no idea what’s around you, what can be coming at you, who’s around or even how to get out of the situation if you felt the need. It is pretty mind altering, and takes a bit of time to settle into.

Immediately, we wonder how big the restaurant is. How many people are here dining with us in the dark. We have absolutely no idea what the layout is, how many tables, how many people. We hear one couple to the left, and we both guess they are at least five feet away. Halfway through our meal they leave, and I reach my arm out to investigate their dining proximity. As soon as I stick my arm out, I touch their table. No more than 6 inches away! I was totally lost in terms of distance and space without vision. And started to think about if I said anything inappropriate, (which I’m sure I did), because they definitely heard it.

Hearing (and talking)

When you enter the darkness, you have an inclination to whisper since you don’t know how far the other people are, and can’t use your visual clues to assess whether the other people are reacting to your voice, whether they can hear you. You don’t know how far your dinner date is. You’re a bit lost. I found myself leaning in to hear Dave speak, and leaning in to speak to him. Without sight to know how big the room is, how close or far people are, without cues to see if people can hear me speaking, I am lost, just guessing what the appropriate level to talk is. Surprisingly, we could only really hear the couple to the left, though we knew more people were there. I guess everyone felt the same instinct to whisper. It was probably the quietest dining experience I’ve ever had.

Taste

I really can’t say whether the food tasted any different than if I could see, but it definitely had an extra exciting element to it before I even took a bite. Every bite was a delicious mystery to solve. I took smaller bites, ate slowly, trying to really taste every bite - the texture, the size, shape, is it a fruit? A vegetable? Bread or fish? We were able to guess maybe 40% of the ingredients in our dishes, and some we were way off, or had absolutely no idea without the luxury of sight.

Smell

It’s hard really to separate taste and smell, they seem to go hand and hand and are taken in simultaneously when eating. But when taste didn’t lend any help with determining what edible item I was putting in my mouth, I relied on smell a bit more. Every now and then taking an unknown item in my hand and bringing it up to my nose. It didn’t end with any “Eureka” moments, but it was a fun part of the guessing process.

Touch

Touch became the default sense when sight wasn’t an option. I had to feel where my glass was, where my napkin and utensils were. I had to touch the food to know whether I needed to use a fork or a spoon. I had to touch the table next to us to determine how close our dining neighbors were. I even used touch to express myself to Dave. I couldn’t smile at him to show that I was enjoying my time. We found ourselves reaching for each other’s hand on the table. We couldn’t connect with our eyes while we talked, so we defaulted to touch.

I don’t think my senses were heightened, but I definitely had to use my senses in a different way. We do rely so heavily on sight. It tells us so many things so we don’t feel the need to actually use our other senses. If we see a strawberry, we already know how it’s going to taste, feel, or smell without even having to eat it, touch it, or smell it. So when you can’t see, you have to actually rely on those other senses, to experience them with those other senses, to extrapolate that information. It would seem that over time, without sight, the other senses would become more acute. So with that logic, with the use of sight, maybe our other senses aren’t as developed as they otherwise would be.

Back into the light

After we finished the dessert, Huy cleared our table and led us back to the lobby. We kind of didn’t want to leave. Readjusting to the light took all of 3 seconds, and we were back to being sighted people once again. We sat back on the red, crushed velvet couch and the host sat with us, iPad in hand. She went through the three courses we just ate, detailing the ingredients. With each swipe, our eyes grew larger as we reminisced about what we thought it was, comparing it to what it actually was. I was wrong, or he was right, or we were both wrong, whatever the combination, it was like reliving the experience.

We got a good amount right, but got some so wrong. We could identify one ingredient, or were sure it was a citrus or basil, or apple or shrimp. Only to be surprised when the real ingredient was revealed. I’m not going to tell you what was served, only that it was delicious, whether we could see it or not, and definitely worth doing if you’re in a city offering this one-of-a-kind culinary experience. I don’t hesitate to say that it was quite possibly the best dining experience I’ve ever had.

Dining in the Dark Saigon   |  Dining in the Dark Saigon