Please Touch Center in Jaffa: A sensual eating experience - review

• Author: BUZZY GORDON
• Published date: 23 September 2021
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

"When you are not eating with your eyes, the flavors and scents are filled with new strengths, and dormant senses come to life. When you don't see anything, you see so much."

This is the guiding principle behind BlackOut, the only dark restaurant in Israel, and likely the only kosher such restaurant among the other 13 worldwide. BlackOut is the culinary dimension of the Please Touch Center, a venue for theater, events and workshops whose participants and facilitators are persons with disabilities, and whose mission is to help integrate the blind, deaf and blind-and-deaf into society.

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It is hard to imagine in advance what awaits at BlackOut, so this review will be as much about the experience as a whole as about the actual food. The first step is to make reservations in advance: the restaurant operates two days a week – Tuesdays and Thursdays – and offers two seatings per night, at 6:30 p.m. and at 9 p.m.

Importantly, there is a major difference between the early and late seating: the former offers the restaurant's Classic Menu – two courses, a main and dessert (NIS 130/150) – and the latter the three-course Premium Menu – appetizer, main course and dessert (NIS 170/190). The lower of the two prices for the complete menu is for a vegetarian main course, the higher entitles you to a fish main course.

Since BlackOut is a kosher (dairy) restaurant, there is no meat on the menu. Not surprisingly, therefore, there is no lack of vegetarian/vegan – and even gluten-free – options. Both menus include a basket of the house bread; the Premium Menu also includes an aperitif as a welcome cocktail.

Initially, diners are seated in a lighted area, where menus are distributed and orders for all courses of your meal taken. English menus are available, and one may also request an English-speaking waiter.

When all diners with reservations have finally straggled in, everyone heads for the locker area, where cellphone and purses are stored for the evening. Names are called, and small groups of about six people are assigned to your guide/waiter for the evening. The guides are all either blind or visually impaired, and they encourage everyone to ask any questions they have about their work – and in general, how they cope in a sighted world

Your guide will then arrange your group in a conga line chain – hands on shoulders of the person in front...