Dining without visual cues offers an opportunity to experience flavour afresh

Have you ever been captivated by a beautifully plated dish of food, only for your first bite to reveal it was more style than substance? Or maybe you’ve turned your nose up at a lumpy, unremarkable stew but then been won over by its depth of flavour. If so, you’re not alone.

Sight shapes a person’s experience of food, influencing perception long before a bite’s been eaten. In a 2024 study, for example, researchers reported how participants were less likely to purchase fruits and vegetables, specifically tomatoes and sweet peppers, that didn’t look perfect. Anything oddly shaped was deemed ‘suboptimal’ and disregarded. When participants tasted the produce, however, their perception shifted and they became more willing to purchase it. An earlier 2014 experiment, which tested reactions to presentation, similarly discovered that diners in a restaurant reported ‘liking the food on the plate… more when it was presented in the more attractive than the less attractive manner’, despite the fact the dishes comprised the same food.

Out of sight So what happens when vision is taken out of the equation? Without visual cues, do diners engage more deeply with their food, perhaps focusing on other qualities – texture, aroma, sound – that are often overlooked? And could this foster a more mindful and flavour-oriented eating experience? One way to find out is to try dining in the dark, a sense-heightening experience pioneered in restaurants such as the multi-location Dans Le Noir? (see ‘Into the dark’ in Breathe 74). Of course, for blind chefs and bakers, eating and cooking without visual cues is the norm. And their experience suggests that sight is only one of the important tools in the kitchen.