Eating Blind

Food is not just about taste, we know. But how much it depends on visual stimuli was a surprise to me. And so were a few other things I didn't expect and which I can't forget.

A couple of years ago I was in Zurich and heard about a restaurant called Blinde Kuh (Blind Cow). It was almost impossible to get a reservation there, but my friend Belle and I prevailed.

We took a streetcar from our hotel to a residential part of the city as dusk was falling. For a while we couldn't find the place, as it was on a side street. We got a bit panicky as our reservation was hard-fought and someone else was bound to take it if we didn't get there on time.

Finally, a small building with a cow on the sign.

We announced ourselves, deposited our belongings in a locker in the reception area, and waited.

Heidi, our waitress, came to fetch us. She wore an apron. She smiled and led us through a doorway and then through heavy drapes to another doorway and into a room of total, pitch-black darkness. Not a modicum of light. There weren't even lighted exit signs. Our eyes never got used to the light because there was none. If you tend to have claustrophobia or would worry about what would happen in a fire, this place wouldn't be for you.

Heidi sat us down on benches at a long, communal table, facing each other. I could hear others nearby. We didn't want her to leave us.

Oh, and Heidi was blind. All the servers were. I guess it was a chance for blind people to find employment that they couldn't otherwise have.

The blind leading the temporarily blind.

The courses were served one at a time. We ate, our hands tentatively reaching to the plate to awkwardly bring food to our mouths. Heidi would help us find the fork or spoon. We groped for the glass. We held on to the plate. We measured with a fork to judge how much was left.

Soup, roasted potatoes and meat. Veal? Chicken? Bread, and butter, which we spread messily. Some pudding for dessert. Vanilla? I can't remember. It tasted like vanilla but it might have been chocolate. Maybe it wasn't pudding but it seemed that way. None of the food tasted very good. Bland, bad texture. Indiscernible tastes and textures.

I forgot what we drank, but I remember not wanting alcohol.

We heard others talking in foreign languages, but I heard no other English words fly into the darkness besides ours. There was laughter at many tables and a birthday celebration going on.

Belle and I felt connected in the darkness, toes touching on purpose, just to be sure we were there. She is a quiet, conservative woman. She hadn't opened up much to me, as we were casual friends. But through the course of the meal she talked about her family, her husband, her stock portfolio, her mother, her fears. I can't believe she talked so much about personal things, feelings, doubts.

When the meal was over, Heidi led us outside to the lockers slowly, our eyes adjusting to the light. She smiled as we said goodbye and she walked to another couple who was coming in.

I realized that the darkness of that room was the condition she endured all of the time. I never realized the depth of blindness as much as I did that moment.

Belle and I left, and took a cab back to the hotel. We were both quiet.

"I said a lot in there," she said.

"Yes, but now we're outside. No worry."

We never talked again of what she told me, and how the darkness bonded us. We were in the light again.

I often think of that dinner. How the food lost its taste. How dark it can be. But what I remember most of all, by far, is Heidi leading us into a darkness from which she never leaves.