Past Programs
Food and Cooking - 2006
Dining in the Dark
14/01/2006
The Dark Side of the Park is a very strange restaurant in Sydney (with a sister establishment in Melbourne) where diners sit in total, absolute darkness. In theory, the absence of visual spectacle heightens all their other senses, particularly taste and smell. So, no light at all, and you can't bring your own, so no flashlights, matches, mobiles, cigarette lighters or luminous watches. Customers order food and drinks in a lit area, then a waiter wearing night vision equipment escorts them, single file with hands on the shoulder of the person in front, into the darkness of the dining room for a meal that will appeal to all the senses but one. Alan Saunders stumbled in to investigate.
Anthony Bourdain
07/01/2006
A conversation with the New York chef and writer Anthony Bourdain about his new cookbook, why it's important to plan well ahead when cooking a meal and why anybody who puts tomato ketchup on fish at the beginning of one of his novels is likely to meet a bloody end in the final chapter.
