This is a detailed blog post dedicated to our experience at Nox – Dine in the Dark on Dec 30th 2017. We paid full price to take part in this and it is not a sponsored post.
Our original NYE plan (tomorrow night) was to go to Nox Restaurant and then into Marina Bay for the fireworks but apparently over 350 000 people are expected at and around the fireworks. Roads will close and there will be entry and exit checkpoints set up to control numbers. That’s insane and will not be enjoyable for either of us. Instead, we moved Nox to tonight! As a side note, I rang up this afternoon to request this (super late notice) and they were wonderfully accommodating about it.
Now, Nox is pretty unusual! Their website says: A reservations only restaurant, NOX challenges guests to a multi-sensory journey of heightened taste, touch, smell and sound as they dine in complete darkness. Guests will find themselves expertly guided by specially trained blind and visually impaired servers, resulting in a truly rich human experience where roles are reversed and the blind now become their eyes.
Basically, you rock up and they take all your stuff (phones, watches etc) and then you eat your meal IN TOTAL DARKNESS! Before you go in to the dark dining room, you choose a drinks package to match your meal. This has to be done beforehand as you can’t change your mind once inside since….it’s pitch black.
All the servers are vision impaired (which I thought was awesome) and the aim is you experience your food with your other senses. At the end, after you head back down to the bar, they show you what you have eaten and you get to discuss it.
We arrived about 15 mins early and were warmly welcomed by the bar staff. They gave us a glass of prosecco and some appertifs while we chose the drinks to match our meal.
We went with the 3 wines ($50 each) to match the NYE $118 meal we had each picked and pre-booked. We then had a short briefing on the restaurant including the fact we should pee first, checking allergies, that our waitperson will be legally blind and it is important we introduce ourselves with our names so they can recognise us and how we can get our waitpersons attention in the dining room. They also explained the table layout and how to eat (clockwise starting at 6pm) for each course. This handy diagram from Rubbish Eat, Rubbish Grow shows the layout:
Then…we went up the stairs! We had to hold on to shoulders to enter the dark room. We later found out there were 4 spaces upstairs and they have a ratio of one serving staff member to 6 customers across all spaces. They had 65 people booked for tonight so had around 9-10 staff on. Our server was Hafiz (spelling – sorry) and he was wonderful! Very cheerful and understanding that I kept losing my spoon. The image below (from the Nox website) gives an idea of the process of getting from the bar to your seat.
Quote one for the night (after my second glass of wine):
Me: I’m feeling around behind me and there’s just a wall. I’m going to feel to the side now
B: you can’t feel to the side, there’s people!
Me: it will be fine. I’m being subtle
B: there’s no subtle way to grab a breast or a beard. Stop it!
Side note: gaps between tables are a little bigger than expected to allow for ease of movement and presumably to stop weirdos like me accidentally feeling up strangers.
We ate quite quickly (80mins) but you could definitely go slower if you wanted to. Hafiz kept reminding us we could slow down but we were enjoying ourselves too much! There was no pressure to rush or to leave though. You have to ask for water and it costs extra, you open the bottle yourself. Hafiz taught B how to serve water to us both (using his finger in the glass to measure) which worked really well the first time. The second refill ended in a bit of a mess…c’mon B….you had one job man!
Quote two for the night:
Me: STOP BLOWING ON ME *awkward pause in the whole room*
B: *hysterical giggles*
Me: I mean…literally…stop it.
He was blowing air in my face from across the table and seeing how much it took until it annoyed me. Seriously. Bloody science-minds.
At the end of the eating part, we came back down to the bar and filled out a little worksheet guessing the different courses and then had them explained to us with pics. The person doing this for us happened to be Jose (spelling) the general manager who was also an Aussie. He spent AGES answering all my questions and didn’t seem put out at all by them. He was great! He also told me that the Braille on the wall all around the bar area spelt out “Nox – Dine in the Dark”
We finished with some chocolates and then headed back to the hotel.
Positives about Nox – Dine in the Dark
⁃ It’s an awesome, one-off experience to try. Both B and I felt it was something we would recommend to others
⁃ As most of you know, I work with young people who have experience trauma, so any environment that supports those with additional needs is of interest to me. Nox employ vision impaired people as their waitstaff which is WONDERFUL. Jose told us that the majority of their staff are late in life blind and are often struggling to find a direction again after such a significant life change. Our server (Hafiz) was absolutely fantastic, he apparently use to be an air steward for Singapore Airlines before a detached retina caused his vision impairment. Nox also employ their staff at a “normal” Singaporean wage and pay the equivalent of what we Australians call “superannuation”. That’s a big deal. I was really happy to hear that and also impressed with the honest response to my (rather rude!) question about pay
– The food and paired wines were tasty and well matched, the dessert wine in particular really adapted to each option within the set dishes
Things to think about before going to Nox – Dine in the Dark
⁃ While the food and drink was pretty good. I tend to agree with some other online commentators and reviews that 4 small dishes per meal (12 dishes in total spread over 3 courses) can be a bit much and as they are all quite different it makes it harder to focus on the experience. We also lost track of appetiser versus main. Having said that, ALL THE FOOD WAS GOOD!! Seriously. So full now
– Nervousness about the dark wasn’t mentioned at all in the briefing. I did A LOT of reading about this place before we went so I knew I could leave the room if I needed to, and how to do so. However as a person with anxiety I do think some mention about this, or even the option to ask, would help. I didn’t feel anxious up in the room but I did find I fixated on the one tiny dark space anomaly (infrared camera) quite often which helped me stay calm. I also had wine. A lot of wine
We both recommend it as a 5 out of 5 dining and “fun things to do once in your life” experience and were REALLY impressed with the food and the service. Our final bill was $338 SGD for 12 (filling) degustation courses each, 3 x matched wines each, 2 x glasses of prosecco on arrival, an appertif and chocolates at the end and a bottle of water to share. Excellent value for money!
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