Dans Le Noir?

What's it like to eat in pitch blackness? In someways a bit freeing actually; it's nice not to have to worry about whether or not you might have smeared something on your lip or whether you're eating too fast or too slow or whatever. I would not, however, ever want to get drunk here - unlike our neighbours who were loudly and enthusiastically ordering tequilla shots. The lack of reference points would make it very disturbing I think. And the food? We went with the red menu - this focused on meat. First up it was pancetta on melon and rare roast beef, next was lamb, duck, couscous and caramelised apples and walnuts. The big revelation was the flavour of the meat. I found it to be extraordinarily juicy, tender, tasty - fantastic. I wonder how much this has to do with not being able to see the rareness. Much as I adore meat, I can be a bit of a cowardly carnivore so the experience of eating the meat without visual reference to pink bits (oo err!) and blood was really something. The meat, and the dessert as it turned out, did what the entree failed to do and that was to seduce with texture. Being forced to focus only on taste and 'mouth-feel' meant that the food could be a seriously sensual experience: the meat was sexy. So too was one of the two ramekins of dessert. It was marscapone with fresh berries - oh my lord. The silky, creamy taste of the marscapone dissolving in your mouth was interrupted by bursts of the tart, sweet flesh of berries - cool and pregnant with their juices. Beautiful, simple, sexy as hell. The other ramekin turned out to contain a sort of mango jelly-type thing. It was fine but a but samey and there was also a (N.R. pointed out a bit mournfully that it was in the singular, despite the promises of the menu we later saw) very dark, bitter chocolate truffle. It was surprisingly easy to deal with pouring wine, water etc - except for judging the fulness of things. Similarly, there was a bit of finger action involved to check whether you had really, really finished things. Dinner was accompanied by the soft sounds of people sucking their fingers in the dark. After this experience, yesterday I wandered around London (again) and ended up by utter accident at the Borough Markets. Oh boy - torture for an enthusiastic amateur! I wanted to buy all the cheeses and the salt cured bacon with providene attached and the venison and the wild-boar and the pork pies and the white currants but I think Australian customs might demur a little at that. So I settled for a wild boar sausage sandwich and some fresh lemon meringue ice-cream. That was extraordinary - lemon custardy ice-cream, tart and creamy - with actual meringue on top. I'm going back today.