A Sakura Story: NOX Dine in the Dark

NOX Dine in the Dark

We recently had a unique dinning experience with friends Sumika and Oyvin. The concept is
Dining in the Dark and the experience is organized by the Singapore Association of the Visually Handicapped (SAVH), as a form of raising awareness about the challenges that persons with vision impairment face in their day to day activities.

Our evening began at a fully-lit downstairs bar, where we were served an appetizer and a cocktail. From there we deposited our belongings in a locker and with hands firmly on the shoulders of our visually-impaired waiter (specially hired and trained by the restaurant), we made our way slowly up into total darkness in the upstairs dining room.

Each course–starter, main and dessert–came with 4 tasting portions of different food, making it a variety of 12 different dishes. Our server wouldn't tell us what the food was, we had to guess for ourselves. We also had sparkling water and wine glasses on the table which we nominated Kingsley to be in charge of filling for our table. He did a fantastic job!

The entire experience was fun and enlightening. It was interesting to realize how clumsy I felt during the dinner without the use of my vision and yet my sense of taste was certainly enhanced. I found myself taking tiny bites to better appreciate the little things about the texture and taste of the food.

At the end of the meal we were lead back downstairs and given a fun quiz to see if we could guess what we ate. Without our vision during dinner, the flavors we were tasting became a slight consersational obsession at the table so I think we impressed the waitress with our incredibly detailed (and accurate) food descriptions.

After our lovely dinner we walked 10 minutes down the road to Haji Lane to Bar Stories a cool new bar in Singapore. There is no menu, so everyone is treated to a personal cocktail consultation when they arrive, asking you whether you prefer sweet or sour, fruity, strong flavors etc until they have an idea of your palate tastes. You then tell the bartender what mood you are in and a special customized cocktail is made for you. The presentation of the cocktails was impressive and the bartender matched our cocktails accurately with each persons mood that evening. Mine was "spicy" so I had a lovely passionfruit cocktail with cayenne pepper mixed in. So fun!