The menu: Dine in the dark, Rhone Wine Week and TouRRoir 16

The Menu has to cast his mind back to the literal and metaphorical dark days of boarding school to recall the last time he regularly ate in total darkness, scoffing biscuits under the covers after lights out, the better to supplement the school canteen’s daily deep-fried offerings of items that may or may not have contained actual food.

To be deprived forever of sight would be an extremely bleak prospect but there is great sport to be had from the occasional bout of sightless consumption, most especially the consequent realisation of the important role the eyes play in forming the overall sensation of ‘taste’.

The return of Dine in the Dark Ireland is benefitting a very wonderful organisation, NCBI (National Council for the Blind Ireland) and is an opportunity to try out an entirely novel approach to putting away some very fine nosebag with participating restaurants including Salt, The Cornstore, Feed Your Senses, Glebe Gardens, Jim Edwards and Fenn’s Quay while Dylan McGrath’s Fade Street Social, in Dublin, is just one of the many other establishments around the country putting on the blinkers and strapping on the nosebag to support a very worthy cause. www.dineinthedark.ie