VANCOUVER -- A blind date could get new meaning in Vancouver with the opening of a Kitsilano restaurant where blind servers will guide customers dining in total darkness.

The restaurant Dark Table is the third blind dining restaurant to be opened in Canada by Moe Alameddine, whose company O.Noir was inspired by Jorge Spielmann, a blind man in Switzerland who launched the concept by blindfolding guests to give them an idea of what eating is like for a blind person.

“I was in the fast food business in Montreal and I found I wanted to do something different,” said Alameddine, whose 75-seat restaurant is scheduled to open Sept. 20 on West 4th Avenue at Trafalgar St., the former site of Quattro on Fourth. “I was intrigued by the idea.

“It was really hard in the first couple of months in Montreal to train people when I started. I didn’t have any experience with blind people and I had to start by teaching them how to come to the restaurant on the bus.”

But those difficult first days in 2006 are long behind him and Alameddine opened another blind dining restaurant, in Toronto, in 2009. One-third of his total staff are legally blind, including nine among the 24 people now starting in Vancouver.

“We have created a lot of jobs for visually impaired people not only serving, we even have blind musicians in Montreal — we support anything related to blindness, we sponsor a lot,” said Alameddine.

“My aim is if I can hire as many visually impaired people as I can, I will be very happy.”

For Tamara Tedesco, 27, the opening of Dark Table represents the opportunity to do a job that many students take for granted — waiting on tables.

“Serving is a very rare opportunity for someone like me who can’t see,” said Tedesco, who will be working two evenings a week at the restaurant in addition to her day job as communications coordinator at the CNIB. “Funny enough, it is a job I always wanted to be able to do — it’s something people always seem to do at some point in their lives.

“It’s a great way to make some extra money. I’ve always had desk jobs where I’m sitting behind a computer all day. I love to write and to speak but I am looking forward to a job that is a little more active. I’m looking forward to talking to customers and moving around.”

The experience is a bit of role reversal for people with sight. When they arrive at the restaurant — reservations recommended if Vancouver is destined to become as popular as the Montreal and Toronto — diners must place their trust in the “guide servers” who will attend to them during dinner. The restaurant is totally dark, except for a faint glow from exit signs — giving the faintest of light compared to the Montreal and Toronto restaurants, where even the exit sign lights are covered.

“It is a unique dining experience,” said Alameddine. “It’s a transfer of trust — you give your trust to guide servers and they guide you in the dark — you have to trust them to do the job.”

The concept has proved popular with Alameddine’s other two restaurants as well as in other cities like New York, London and Paris that have restaurants modelled after the original Swiss “blindekuh” in Zürich. Alameddine said he was attracted to Vancouver because it is “a very nice city and open for social concepts.”

Alameddine refers to his restaurant’s cuisine as “fusion Mediterranean.”

“It is a small menu — not too big,” he said. “The most popular dish is the surprise dish. It’s the chef’s choice. People can taste it and start to discover what it is.

“It creates a lot of fun to be curious about what they are eating.”

While the unemployment rate among blind people varies across the country, Alameddine said it is about 65 to 70 per cent in B.C.

“We hope this opens the door for other employers to start recruiting visually impaired people,” he said.

gshaw@vancouversun.com

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