Eating In Silence At Brooklyn’s Place For Food Monks
DINERS at Nicholas Nauman’s Eat in Brooklyn, New York, can book to eat on a night when everyone eats in total silence. Should a glass break, no-one will cheer. The bill is presented in total silence. The waitress will not ask “Did you enjoy your meal?” You will not speak to your friends, but communicate by raising eyebrows, grinning, frowning or rolling your eyes at the couple by the door who look like they’re having a silent row.
Says Nauman:
“It’s like when you take a piece of lettuce and you put it against your lips, there are an incredible number of sensations going on that we are not paying any attention to. And to actually have an opportunity to engage that, to explore that, to just be with that is really rare.”
Chef Nauman seems to have upon the perfect rouse by which to attract the pretentious . Dish up ordinary fare – salads and sandwiches – and encourage the diners to see them as religious relics. You see a piece of lettuce. They see a chance to engage with nature. A snip at 9$.
A diner named Jessica says of her adventures in lettuce:
“I actually liked it. I thought it helped me slow down and think about every bite, instead of just devouring it and then realizing it was gone. So I really enjoyed it. And it brought out a lot of the flavour in the food and it was”
The Wall Street Journal was there:
Ms. Usbeck, who felt she might break into speech before dessert arrived, used the opportunity to give herself a pep talk in the bathroom mirror — “only a mental pep talk,” she promised — in which she stared herself down and told herself “You can do this.”
It’s bit like pretending to be deaf. But all that does is make you look forward to the next noise. Any cough or rustle comes as a welcome relief. If you really want people to enjoy flavours, feed them via a tube for a week then have them eat a grape.
Eat doesn’t go far enough. We’d suggest muting more of the sense, by blindfolding eaters and forbidding them from using their hands, removing chairs and other distractions – tables, plates, cutlery – and negating any sense of smell by placing a peg attached to the ceiling by pulleys on everyone’s noses:
Posted: 24th, October 2013 | In: The Consumer Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
