How taste changes when we eat in the dark – 04/17/2023 – Equilibrium

In the restaurant’s elegant and understated lobby, a man explains the rules. No devices that emit light, such as wristwatches and cell phones, are allowed inside the hall.

All belongings must be placed in the lockers next to the front door. Coats must be hung up; if you take any inside, you’ll lose them.

The restaurant is called Blind Cow (“Blind Cow”) and is located in a mud house in Zurich, Switzerland. In it, expectations are your responsibility.

Elsewhere, you might look around and find a purse that has fallen to the floor. Here, behind the blackout curtains that close off the dining room, a different reality prevails.

The red-haired waiter arrives in the lobby. He instructs us to form a line behind him, as if we were going to conga. From there, we pass through a gloomy anteroom, with velvety curtains… and then nothing can be seen.

There is the sound of a room full of people laughing and talking, as well as the clatter of cutlery. But to the eyes, nothing but the smudges that swirl across our vision when the lids are closed.

In fact, it doesn’t matter whether your eyes are open or not. You can close them if you like. It doesn’t make any difference.

Dark restaurants like Blind Cow offer a tempting novelty: a meal eaten in total darkness. In this case, it is served by waiters who are blind or have limited vision.

For them, darkness is not difficulty. In the dark of dining halls, they move easily and safely, while sighted people remain chained to their chairs, unable to move.

Although there are already some restaurants of this type around the world, Blind Cow was the first permanent experience. It was founded by a blind priest in 1999.

Came here with my sister, and as I fumbled with the back of my chair and my senses faltered, I imagined how different dining in the dark would be for people with sight. In the absence of vision, do the other senses become more acute? Do you eat less when you have no idea what you’re eating? And what does being in the dark do to other aspects of your mind?

The dishes arrive

The first bite already makes it clear how strange this experience will be, at least for me.

The waiter’s voice says that in front of us there is a spoon with a small appetizer. I keep groping until I find the cold metal object, which I bring to my lips.

I notice the existence of several small buttons and feathers, as if I were eating a small mossy trunk where mushrooms were born. I can’t define it with a name.

In my mind’s eye, the black format has a white outline, replacing the visual information. My sister says it could be apple, maybe with a little cabbage. But without the image to fix my impressions, I can remember almost nothing about the sensation in my mouth after swallowing.

Several psychologists have studied the effects of vision on memory. The same people asked about what they remember hearing – from recordings of pool halls to the barking of dogs – have more difficulties than when asked about what they had seen.

Another study concluded that memories verified on the same day of your training are much clearer if the information is visual. Auditory information is remembered more vaguely, without as much specificity.

Immersed in a sea of ​​darkness and texture, I become aware of how much my eyes form records in memory.

Determined to do better this time, my sister and I agreed to try the next dish together, revealing its identity with just the tongue. Certainly, the dish includes crispy shavings of raw cabbage, sour dried fruit and even, she says, a grape. Nuts, perhaps?

Then comes a cold garnish, such as yogurt or cottage cheese. We have trouble relating the avalanche of sensory information, accompanied by fleeting memories of the past – “the last time I ate this, whatever it was, I was somewhere in the country with friends” – to the name of the food.

But we managed to remember this dish better, as we concentrated on identifying each of these perceptions, as if we were fixing butterflies on pins, assigning designations to each one of them.

The physical task of eating in the dark itself is much less labor intensive. Moving my fork in a circle around the edge of my plate and checking my lips to see if I’ve caught anything, I manage to clean my plate with ease.

The main course arrives – beef, not lamb as we decided, on a layer of something puréed.

We circle around some unknown vegetables until finally the click comes: mandioquinha! Pumpkin cubes and seeds swim in the sauce, providing unexpected bites.

Running my fork around the edge of my plate, I get strangely judicious about this food I can’t see. But like everything.

This reaction confirms one of the rare studies available on dining in the dark. The study concluded that without the guidance of vision, people can consume much more food than normal without realizing it.

During the study, some people who dined in the dark were given normal portions, while others were given oversized portions. After the meal, all participants had access to a dessert served in a buffet, in a bright room.

The participants who received the supersized portions ate 36% more calories than the others, but ate the same amount of dessert and were more or less as hungry as the others after dinner. This indicates that actually seeing the food in front of us can interfere with our calculations of how hungry we are.

For my part, I eat whatever I can catch on my fork, and the excitement of the quest overwhelms any feedback I can get from my stomach.

That’s not to say there aren’t physical difficulties with this meal. I ordered a dry red wine and immediately tried to drink it through my nose. In the dark, I don’t understand how tall the wine glass is and where I should direct it.

The restaurant gets quieter. Several groups whose voices we have learned to recognize have already left.

There are stories of people panicking in the soft gloom of dark restaurants, perhaps annoyed by the total lack of light.

In a way, these restaurants have something in common with the sensory deprivation chambers used by psychologists who first studied the sensation seeking that is a fundamental part of our personalities.

Some people do not react well when they are left without stimulation, while others find it relaxing and still others may start singing to pass the time.

It’s time for dessert, announced by the waiter’s voice over my shoulder. I dip the spoon in and have no idea what it is, except that it’s something very, very familiar.

Cardamom… small, sweet, crunchy bits… a smooth, grainy cream. I’m eating what feels like an awful lot of the candy, mulling over what might remind me of summer nights at my parents’ house, street fairs and the caramel aroma of waffles.

I notice that my senses of taste, touch, and smell are less accurate than usual. The main difference is that they are disconnected, lacking the unifying power of vision.

It’s only when I find something horribly crunchy on my spoon, as if I’m munching on a beetle, that I recognize with a start the crunchy chestnut cream.

My last food of the meal is unmistakable: crunchy sweet popcorn.

We had tea and totally forgot to eat the biscuits on the saucers because we couldn’t see them.

We realize that it’s actually a relief not to be seen. Invisibility takes away the responsibility of looking a certain way, eating a certain way, or keeping things tidy.

You can relax. You can just sit, talk and think. You are just a voice in the darkness like any other, freed from your body at last.

We silently call the waiter. We finish dinner.

When we appeared in the lobby, we asked for the time. Without watches or cell phones, our impression is that we were in the dark for about 45 minutes. We were surprised to find that two hours had passed. Without the confirmation of the vision, our ability to control time has disappeared.

For creatures like us, with no practice in the dark and a lifetime lived in the light, it’s not surprising that time without sight is indefinite.

Months after that unusual meal, I find it difficult to reconstruct the flavors and sensations I experienced in the dark. Almost all that remains is the strange impression of the first bite. Its shape is a glowing void in my mind’s eye.

read the original version of this report (in English) on the BBC Future website.

This text was published here