The very choice Mattgeeknz has writ­ten a guest review for us, because we knew we’d be unable to write a review about being blind­fold­ed and stick­ing every­thing put in front of us in our mouths with­out being smut­ty about it.

Capi­tol and CBM have teamed up to host three blind-din­ing evenings in Welling­ton. The first was on Mon­day, and there are two more sit­tings on Mon­day and Tues­day next week. It’s a fun twist on the din­ing expe­ri­ence: you’re blind­fold­ed for the entire­ty of your meal, and at the end of each course you’re told what you’ve just eat­en.

After meet­ing at the Embassy and enjoy­ing hor d’oeu­vres and a glass of cham­pagne, you’re tak­en down­stairs in groups to the front of Capi­tol, where you’re asked to don a blind­fold before you enter the restau­rant. Once you can no longer see, the wait staff lead you to your table, and from there you begin to map out your sur­round­ings.

With the blind­fold on, your sense of space becomes great­ly reduced.  There are the things you can touch: the table, your wine glass, your water glass, and maybe a wall beside you. Your entire imme­di­ate world is defined by what you can feel with your fin­ger­tips. Beyond that there is mere­ly a ring of sound — the mud­dled con­ver­sa­tions of oth­ers — which gives you no sense of depth or dis­tance.

The food is excep­tion­al, and the wine well-matched. The meal has been designed to be fin­ger-friend­ly, and every dish not only tastes unique but feels unique. The entrees are served in chi­nese soup spoons and shot­glass­es, while the mains and desserts are either served as-is or with­in stur­dy ramekins. With­out sight, you’re free to con­cen­trate on flavours and tex­tures. There was noth­ing served that a sea­soned restau­rant-goer would­n’t hap­pi­ly eat, and aside from a cou­ple of adven­tur­ous choic­es, they haven’t tak­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to feed blithe­ly unas­sum­ing din­ers a whole bunch of freaky gul­lets and organs. You’re in safe hands. Guess­ing what you’re being served is part of the fun, and if you’re right more often than wrong then you’re doing very well indeed.

There’s an oppor­tu­ni­ty to take off your blind­fold between the entree and main cours­es. Although most peo­ple do, I rec­om­mend that you don’t — if you can stand it — as the inten­si­ty of smell, sound and touch is so great­ly height­ened by the time you get to dessert that it becomes the high­light of the whole expe­ri­ence.

Capi­tol have blacked out their win­dows so any unco­or­di­nat­ed efforts you have in get­ting food to your mouth are not seen by casu­al passers­by. They have left small peep­holes, how­ev­er, so a suf­fi­cient­ly moti­vat­ed per­son could wan­der past Capi­tol dur­ing the next sit­tings and take a peek to see what a restau­rant full of fum­bling blind­fold­ed din­ers looks like.

By the time the meal con­cludes and you take your blind­fold off you have a head full of mem­o­ries, and not one of them is visu­al. They’re all audi­to­ry, olfac­to­ry or tac­tile: bursts of flavour, the stem of a wine glass, over­heard con­ver­sa­tions, or the touch of your wife’s hand from across the table. What I also found was that we had an extreme­ly focussed con­ver­sa­tion. With­out visu­al cues our words had to be well-cho­sen if we want­ed to under­stand each oth­er.