Adventure Dining

Server in the dark at L.A.'s Opaque restaurant // Photo courtesy of Opaque

Some restaurants are trying all-new twists where the servers are the stars—when you can see them.

By Christine Champ for MSN City Guides

You know how you’d like your steak, your salad (dressing on the side), and your cheesecake (cherries on top), but what about the waiter?

Some of the most skilled servers do their job so well—deftly gliding past to refill your water glass without a summons—they’re virtually invisible.

A few restaurants however, have taken a different spin on service, offering customers with something beyond ordinary expectations, making their servers much more visible—even when they’re impossible to see.

Heard and not seen
At L.A.’s Opaque, the servers are completely invisible, along with the silverware, the table and everything on your plate.

Inspired by the success of the dining-in-the-dark concept in Europe with Paris’s Dans le Noir and Zurich’s The Blind Cow Restaurant, Ben Uphues (managing member of the LLC behind Opaque) decided to try the trend in the city where it’s all about seeing and being seen. The weekly dining event begins in the lobby of the Hyatt West Hollywood where guests order from a menu of contemporary cuisine.
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“Not even a pinhole of light” is permitted into the inky interior of the dining room, where it’s so dark, says Uphues, customers “can’t see their hand an inch front of their eyes.” Servers are visually impaired to different degrees. Dining in the dark however, reverses the familiar roles of guide and guided in the lighted world. “No one moves in or out on their own,” says Uphues referring to diners.

Words are what make dining in the dark work. You’ll hear boisterous chatter, servers signaling the cook, and the occasional overturned plate, but one thing you won’t hear—the sound of silence. “Everyone associates darkness with gloom, graves and quiet” Uphues says. “But the room is really alive.”

Headset radios enable staff to communicate with the kitchen and each other. Without visual cues, waitress Michelle notes that she remembers people's drinks by remembering their names, personalities or simply by asking. She adds that the constant chit-chat makes “getting the table’s attention” a challenge. Disoriented diners turn to their server for assistance and advice—asking where to place their drink, how to find their fork, or how to slice the salmon. Server and served quickly bond. Says Michelle: “I went to Red Lobster last night and I couldn’t even tell you the waiter's name and when they leave here, they probably know our life stories.”

Opaque also hosts dining in the dark at San Diego’s US Grant hotel, and Uphues plans to take the dark dining concept on the road in a multi-city Foundation Fighting Blindness fundraising tour.

CONTINUED: Made from a secret Ninja recipe

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