Dining in the Dark

This article originally appeared in the Harvard Gazette.

The food was the only standard part of Nick Hoekstra’s dinner party.

That’s because all of his guests wore blindfolds and sat together in a dark room. Waiters dressed in black ushered out the first course, a roasted apple and butternut squash bisque with a cinnamon-sugar brioche crouton in the center. Jennie Reuter groped for a spoon but ended up dipping her fingers in the soup.

It was all part of Hoekstra’s plan: the accidents, the humor, the discovery that comes with dining in darkness. Hoekstra, a student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), lost his vision when he was 8 years old, the result of a pseudotumor in his brain. In the years since, he has learned to rely on his other senses to get by. But his friends had no such experience.

“Can you just tell me is this a glass of water I’m holding?” Jenny Gombas wondered. Of course, no one could help her. ...

To read the complete article, please visit the Harvard Gazette.