There are many things in life that don’t go together: Paris Hilton and carbs, for instance, or skinny jeans and, well, just about anyone. Restaurants and concepts are another; I’m all for subverting expectations, but the fact is that restaurants are for eating, drinking and talking. Any ‘concept’ that gets in the way of those basic requirements is a bad one. And most do.
ctaste is just such a concept restaurant. It has taken me some time to work myself up to writing this review, given that in response to an email I sent to one of my friends about it he said, ‘god Vicky, it sounds like you need counselling after that’. ctaste is so wrong on so many levels that it’s hard to know where to start.
So I decided to look on the website to see how it describes itself. I quote: ‘Enjoying your food, but in a different way. Using your senses, but see nothing. Visiting ctaste Amsterdam is not like visiting an ordinary restaurant. In ctaste you will enjoy your food in the complete dark…’ What is wrong with this picture (apart from the horrible grammar)? First up, ‘using your senses’; yes, that’s what I do every day at every mealtime. I eat with my mouth and my nose and my hands and my ears and my eyes. And there’s a good reason for this. Heston Blumenthal understands this; that’s why he’s got several Michelin stars. Depriving diners of one of their senses is just nonsensical.
‘ctaste – Dining in the Dark – will seat you in a literally pitch-black dining room where you will be guided and served by blind or visually impaired individuals’, the website continues. This strikes me as kind of disability tourism. My grandfather was blinded by the war and I’m sure it wasn’t much fun. I have no desire to participate in this type of strange voyeurism (pun intended) on a world I’m lucky enough not to inhabit. And incidentally, our waiter wore glasses – he was no more ‘visually impaired’ than 50% of the population.
I can’t tell you much about the food because I was so busy trying to fight down the rising claustrophobia that I can barely remember tasting anything. I do know that the wine we’d ordered to come with our starter arrived after we’d finished it, and the rest of the wine was vinegary, oxidized plonk (wine is one thing I seem able to taste with my eyes shut) and half of it ended up all over the lap of one of my fellow diners. Unsurprisingly.
And finally: ‘Our team will make sure that you will not forget this evening easily’. Well they succeeded there. It was, without exception, the worst dining experience of my life. If I could give it no stars at all, I would; sadly the coding doesn’t let me. I would have had more fun burning the fifty euro note I used to pay.
I suggest that ctaste change their website text to something along the lines of ‘Warning: do not enter if you have, or have had, any of the following conditions:
– claustrophobia
– fear of the dark
– common sense’
Or better still: ‘Closed’.
