Meg Nix
Picture this: you and 21 of your best friends around a rectangular table spread with the shiny lids of catered dishes. The chef and the servers stroll by the table, revealing filet mignon medallions with bordelaise sauce and mushrooms. A bottle of Brut Grand Reserve sweats in a bath of ice. The view: the low sand hills of the desert, sunlit behind the skyscrapers of Las Vegas. The only thing between you and the ground: a 180-foot drop.
If you're like most Americans today, bored by the cubicle and tired of leftovers, you're looking to push the limits of what and where a meal can be.
A night with 
Dinner in the Sky
, for example, begins with a red carpet
ceremony, a pre-dinner photo shoot, and hors d'oeuvre-all enjoyed
on the ground before the passengers are loaded onto a crane, strapped
in like Nascar racers, and hoisted 18 stories above their city of
choice. If musicians have been scheduled to accompany the dinner
party, they are raised on a separate platform with room for
instruments: a cello, a grand piano. No big thing, it seems, is
impossible. The flight skyward takes about one minute. If someone
needs to use the bathroom, they simply raise their hand and the
platform begins its 60-second descent.
"We get a lot of people who are afraid of heights and want to overcome their fear," Proprietor Michael Hinden admits. "We give them an opportunity to liberate themselves. Plus, once the adrenaline drops off and they realize they're safe up there, the senses are enhanced, and everything tastes better." Dinner in the Sky's success in 31 countries seems to be satisfying consumers' needs to push against the conventional safety of the ho-hum, table-bound dinner.
No bungee jump is involved, no safety risks, really. And with tickets ranging from $249-289 for the Vegas lift, this isn't a cheap thrill; for today's diners, who go to the same restaurants and order variations on the same themes week after week, it's about filling up from a whole new perspective and abandoning the things we take for granted-like solid footing. Or sight.
Now picture this: you can't picture anything. You're blindfolded, being led into a room full of clinking forks, hushed voices, and unfamiliar music. The idea behind the concept of Dark Dining Projects isn't far from what the founders of Dinner in the Sky had in mind: when humans enter unknown territory by being deprived of a sense in some way, the other senses become more acute. Surprising competence and attunement to texture, scent, and temperature rise as a result of denying one's eyes entrance to the feast.
Unlike some West Coast restaurants
employing a similar theme where you eat in a room that's totally
pitch black and navigated by a visually impaired staff, at Dark
Dining Projects, "It isn't about blindness," Artistic Director
Dana Salisbury explains. "It's about a celebration of the senses."
Salisbury had the idea when she was in a studio choreographing a
piece based on the idea of non-visual perception. She peeled back an
orange and was dusted with the pungent oils from the fruit, realizing
that she had never before noticed the intoxication and pleasure
possible in eating something so si
mple. That orange gave birth to a
successful collaboration project with many restaurants across the
country, including Camaje Bistro in Greenwich Village, where
Salisbury held the first blindfolded four-course event.
On the menu: English Pea Soup with Tarragon Pesto, Sea Scallop Ceviche with
Goat Cheese-Stuffed Peppadews, and Rhubarb Compote. "Surprisingly," Salisbury admits, "it's not very messy. Some people use their silverware, but others are more comfortable without it. Plus, who's going to notice if you're using your hands? No one can see. Some people even end up feeding each other. The dinners are really quite intimate."
Dark Dining Projects isn't as risky as Dinner in the Sky, but they share the same inspiration: asking people to navigate differently than they would in their everyday life. "It's funny, you find that people enjoy things they never knew they'd like. People are looking to be stimulated after sdoing things that are fairly impersonal all day. This gives them a chance to be a part of something while it's happening. It gives them a chance to learn that pleasure can be healthy, and that the senses we often take for granted are an amazing resource."
If heights and darkness aren't for you,
how about a dinner tucked into sea cave where the water laps lightly
at the rocks and your elbows rest on a block-long linen tablecloth
ruffled by the wind? Outstanding in the Field
is a nomadic culinary group that
stages dinners on farms, in greenhouses, atop mountains, and even in
museums, so long as the dinner spread comes from nearby hands. Like
Salisbury and Hinden, Founder Jim Denevan attributes the allure of
Outstanding in the Field's roving dinners to an elevated level of
feeling out in t
he field. "Senses are enhanced in the fresh air.
It's not every day you get to sit next to the person who planted the
beans, raised the lamb, and shaped the cheese on your plate."
Denevan's dinners happen under the dusky blue sky or the curve of a cave where farmers, producers, artists and chefs sit down together to share a meal that was picked and prepared minutes away. With past dinners in places ranging from Seattle to Santa Fe to Atlanta and even abroad, Outstanding the Field leaves no soil unturned. The dinners are about honoring those who are often overlooked: the small farmers who nourish the American stomach and spirit.
Part of the draw of dining in the dark, in a field, or in the sky is that these experiences aren't entirely food-focused; the focal point is pushing against spacial limitations in the company of others. Really, dining out in unconventional ways could be considered a neo-networking tool. Anxiety gives way to empathy when people go through the same unexpected experience with each other. Barriers fall down, conversations begin. The true pleasure is discovering a new way of eating and being without having to leave your own city.
"Most of the time you go dining at a restaurant and you don't talk to anyone else," Hinden points out. "At these events, everyone talks to each other. When dinner's over, they say: 'We did that together! What are you doing tonight?'"