Restaurant gives guest a chance to dine in the dark
“If you need any assistance, like going to the washroom, or anything, really, remember my name, Victor, and I will take you outside. So, come on in, put your hand on my shoulder…”
With a warm, patient smile, he grabs my hand and places it on his shoulder. The sound of 50’s diner music begins to invade my eardrums. We pass through two sets of doors, and suddenly I am surrounded by pitch black- the kind where you can’t see your hand in front of your face kind of black. Patiently, Victor leads me over to a corner table and guides me into my seat.
For him, this is an average day as long-time waiter at O.Noir, a trendy Toronto restaurant located near Church and Bloor streets. O.Noir is unique for two reasons; one, it hires almost exclusively visually impaired servers and secondly, you will dine in complete darkness to stimulate the effects of being blind and get a sense of what it’s like for people who are sight impaired.
Victor, who declined to give his last name, has been working in O.Noir since the day they opened five years and five months ago. For him, working at the restaurant is a supplement to his day job in the human rights and equity field.
“[At my work] making changes takes a very long time, even to raise social awareness,” he said. “ But here, it’s instant. People feel much more empathetic, and they think we do something extraordinary. It’s a real eye-opening experience for them.”
Serena Gonzales has dinned at O.Noir twice. She says that in addition to your taste buds being heightened in the dark, there’s also an added element of empathy that diners experience.
“You think more like people who are blind,” she said. “Trying to find utensils, seeing if you had any food left on the plate is hard, but it reminds you that people who are impaired have to do the same thing every day.”
“I would like a lot of my friends to come here, but for some, they cannot even understand the concept.” Victor said. “Affordability is a big factor for my community members and new immigrants. Many cannot afford [luxuries] like this.”
The O.Noir concept began as a European fad. When it expanded to Canada, the first city to get an O.Noir restaurant was Montreal. O.Noir Owner Dr. J.R. Feng, a PhD in polymer chemicals, says community is important for the restaurant- and not just the one around the trendy Church Street area.
“Being associated with supporting the waiters, the blind, is really awesome,” Dr. Feng said. “We donate to the CNIB [Canadian National Institute for the Blind]. I try to get involved with their community.”
Although the servers are blind or visually impaired, all the cooks in the restaurant are sighted. He added that the restaurant runs three or four events a year geared towards making sure the blind community feels involved and raising funds for the organization, something he says is extremely important to him.
“People who are blind are not disabled,” Dr. Feng said. “They can work, they can contribute, but for some reason their unemployment rate is so, so high. At least 70 per cent are unemployed in the GTA. I do want to promote the awareness of the blind in the community.”
According to the CNIB, over 180,000 Ontarians are vision impaired. Half of those who are visually impaired live on less than $20,000 a year. The national average income is $10,000 more. Dr. Feng says he hopes that his guests can empathize with how difficult this can be.
“For the guests to be able to overcome some challenge, to understand how these people live their lives, that’s really important [to me],” he added. “Some guests do have a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”
Victor says that it’s not just the guests who are getting a lot out of the experience, but the servers, too, many of who have other daytime jobs to make ends meet.
“This job is like therapeutic job for me, especially after the stress of my day job,” he said. “I can come here and forget about everything. As soon as I get in the dark, you realize it’s a totally different world.”
When the interview is over, Victor stands up and expertly navigates his way over to me, where he carefully grabs my hand and leads me out the two doors and back into bar area of the restaurant. This experience can never duplicate what it’s like to be sight impaired, but it allows diners (and myself) to peer into the window of what it can be like.
O.Noir, located on Church St., gives guests the opportunity to stimualte being sight impaired
By Beth Jarrell
PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 26, 2014
PHOTOGRAPH BY BETH JARRELL