Your order will fall on deaf ears at a new Toronto restaurant — but that’s not a bad thing.

In fact, that’s the whole point at Signs Restaurant, Canada’s first restaurant mostly staffed by deaf servers. Opening July 16 at Yonge and Wellesley, the new bar and restaurant — “where noise meets silence” — asks customers to order food and drink using sign language with assistance from a “cheat book” that illustrates how to sign menu items.

Want the chicken salad? Use your index finger and thumb to chomp once like a beak, and toss a salad with both hands. In the mood for rabbit? Turn your hands inward against your temples and flap two fingers like bunny ears.

It’s sure to be an entertaining — and educational — dining experience, but Signs is really more than that. Owner Anjan Manikumar has embarked on a kind of community service for a deaf population that often struggles to find employment in a speech-oriented workforce.

When Manikumar was a manager at a Boston Pizza in Markham, he noticed one of his regular guests was deaf. With no tools or education for staff to communicate with him, ordering food was a game of point, nod and serve.

Manikumar sought to change that. He learned American Sign Language, known as ASL, beginning with the basics: “hello,” for starters, a salute-like wave of the hand. And most important, “enjoy” — a two-handed chest and belly rub.

“He was very delighted. He brought his friends the next day,” says Manikumar, who has since broadened his ASL vocabulary through interactions with the deaf community, a group he now calls “family.”

From that moment of prime customer service came the idea for Signs Restaurant, where the deaf can work and dine using their language, but also a place for the hearing to learn about the deaf community. For Manikumar’s deaf staff — who make up more than half of his new hires and nearly all dining room servers — Signs is a rare opportunity.

In 2006, Statistics Canada reported an unemployment rate of 10.4 per cent for those with “hearing limitations,” a broad category. The number is estimated to be much higher for the completely deaf. In a 1998 survey by the Canadian Association of the Deaf, the group found that 37 per cent of deaf Canadians were unemployed. Little research has been done since on deaf employment.

“This isn’t just a restaurant. This is starting an entirely different workforce for the deaf community,” says assistant general manager Rachel Shemuel, who expects some minor glitches as the restaurant opens its doors this month. While most new restaurants have a long-established industry to follow, Signs faces a unique challenge.

“There’s no model. Nobody’s ever done it,” says executive chef Marc Breton, formerly of the Gladstone Hotel and Rivoli on Queen St. Breton says the kitchen will have to be flexible as staff learn how to operate with both hearing and non-hearing staff.

Signs will feature a “contemporary menu with a blend of Canadian and international food” featuring several game meats, including rabbit. There’s also an “exquisite” wine list.

It isn’t the first “deaf restaurant” — San Francisco is home to Mozzeria, a pizza restaurant with deaf owners and staff — but it is the first in Canada to have a large deaf serving staff and the first to fully integrate sign language into the dining experience. When guests arrive they will be greeted by a hearing hostess who will act as a translator as guests are introduced to their deaf server. Once seated, the “cheat book” of ASL illustrations will help guests communicate with their server. Pointing is allowed — if absolutely necessary.

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The sensory concept of Signs Restaurant is similar to the popular O.Noir restaurants, where guests dine in pitch black to experience the world of their blind servers. But Signs will offer a more fruitful dining experience, says Shemuel.

“How many times do you want to sit in the dark eating a steak with your hands?” she jokes about O.Noir. “Here, this is something that you can come back to again and again and again and keep learning.”