Cuisine in the Dark at QAANS – Western Dinner Set in Johor’s Pitch-black Restaurant

Cuisine in the Dark at QAANS offers a unique dining experience unlike the many other restaurants and cafes out there.

If you are used to taking pictures of your food before digging in, it’s time to put those cameras and smartphones aside.

Step into Cuisine in the Dark at QAANS, a restaurant of total darkness, where you can only rely on your hearing, smell, touch and taste. From walking and pulling out a chair to finding your cutleries, forking your meats and tasting the various ingredients on your plate, this place heightens your senses to the surrounding; it is so pitch dark that no matter how hard you try, your sight won’t ‘adjust’, unlike how when you switch off your room’s light and you could still make out the shape of your bed.

The four-course dinner set RM 136+ per person comes with an appetiser, soup, main and dessert. Reservations online via TABLEAPP are entitled to a 14.5% discount (to only RM 118+ per person).

Each diner, including myself, would undergo a briefing before entering.

Drinks are at additional costs and we each had a juice where we tried to decipher the fruits and vegetables blended within.

After which, we were brought into the pitch-black restaurant by their staffs. Though they were visually impaired/blind, they provided an excellent service throughout our meal. Not only were we warmly greeted, they were also able to deliver and clear food from our table seamlessly.

We had a comforting Western meal comprising of dishes such as the fried chicken fingers, leek and potato soup, pesto pasta and chocolate brownie cake. Each course actually comes in two different varieties hence which it would appear more like an eight-course meal. The portion was just alright to keep you full and satisfied.

The menu refreshes every two months or so.

As someone who is blessed with the eyesight to see the appearance and colours of objects, I could only imagine the table setting before me and manoeuvre my way from my cup of orange juice to the napkin, the spoon, fork and bowls.

While my friend faced the issue of constantly feeding her cheeks with food, I started encountering difficulties scooping up the cous cous which seemed to be landing outside my plate. Nonetheless, as avid eaters, we could guess most of the items right.

The most challenging part though was walking in the right direction. We walked in a line with one hand on another’s shoulder… it felt daunting because I had no inkling what’s before, after and beside me, and how long the walk would be.

At that moment in time, counting on one another’s support and company was what greatly warmed me up the most.

 

Cuisine in the Dark at QAANS