Standing in front of the young man who announced that he’d be the waiter for the evening, I couldn’t have guessed he’s visually impaired. Sure his stare was fixed elsewhere, though he was addressing us with assertiveness derived from familiarity in his territory — the pitch dark interiors of the Unsichtbar (invisible) restaurant in Berlin city centre.

Unsichtbar Berlin calls itself the largest dark restaurant in the world. This means, at full capacity, it keeps 80 people in the dark. When you are served your food and drinks, you do not see what you eat but only taste it, and the wait staff are blind.

As far as adventurous eating goes, I once ordered an egg salad in a northern town in Myanmar and, unbeknownst to me, a century-old egg appeared on my plate. Tinged slate gray and sulphurous, I liked its earthy flavours but would have never mustered courage to order it from a menu.

During my travels, I had seen various culinary misfits on menus, like cow and horse offal in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, but none of them reached my plate or palate. In short, I’ve never tried anything that crossed the boundaries of normal eating behaviour. After all, being raised as a tame vegetarian had its disadvantages, and I couldn’t dispose of the queasiness I associated with meat eating.

But eating in the dark is different. So when a friend suggested that we should try the restaurant, I gamely took it up. I cannot flaunt my meal in an Instagram post but I can live with it, I thought. The waiter urged me to hold on to his shoulder and I, along with my fellow diner, followed him into the inky and deepening darkness of the restaurant in a wobbly human train. I felt instantly claustrophobic. I’ve been in crammed lifts, subterranean caves and even in a repurposed mine once. But this felt different, like a blanket has been thrown on my face, rendering me instantly blind.

I could hear the clatter of cutlery and the muffled voices of diners but the dense darkness rendered everything non-visual. Eventually I got seated, ran my hands along the contours of my table to find my bearings and felt the cutlery. The cutlery is placed using a clock analogy — spoons at 12 o’clock, knife at three and fork at nine. Our waiter left us after initial instructions to fetch our salad, which, according to the menu card, was “Only a selected few receive the sweet anointing on a field of greens”.

Earlier, before entering the dining area, we were presented with a puzzling menu that had suggestive descriptions of the evening’s specials. I picked the fish selection, according to which, ‘Like Zeus, this nobleman dreams in his golden bed’ was the main course. The restaurant does everything in its control to keep me in the dark.

I fumbled with the cutlery, felt the wine glass and toasted carefully, so as to not spill the wine all over goodness knows where. When ‘Sweet anointing’ arrived, my only guess was that it could be a Caesar salad with some nuts thrown in. Subsequent courses followed; our waiter parroted ‘ Hat es geschmekt ?’ each time — a German tradition of asking the guests if the food tasted good.

I could swear the fish in my main course was burnt but there was no way to prove it; perhaps the chefs were cooking in the dark too. And I didn’t want to appear rude by pointing it out. By now, though my eyes still did not get used to the darkness, I became familiar with the dining room — a couple sat next to me and a boisterous group of friends somewhere in a corner. More guests shuffled in and out, guided by waiters. It seemed almost everyone was snapping fingers to attract the attention of the wait staff.

My mood at the end of the meal summed up what I read in one of the TripAdvisor reviews. Erelbnis top, Essen flop . In other words — top experience, flop food. I arrived at the conclusion that it was the experience and not the food that takes precedence at Unsichtbar.

I walked out into the drizzly night, partially lit by the yellow of neon lamps, relieved to step into a world where I can see things. Though the food didn’t make my heart gush, I could tick one thing off my culinary experience list. That evening, not long after I left Unsichtbar, I updated my culinary wish-list: Up next would possibly be eating in the buff in London’s newly opened naked restaurant, my unflattering body image be damned.

Prathap Nairis a freelance writer currently based in Berlin

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