Purpose: Visual cues from food play a crucial role in how humans perceive different flavors and control appetite. Plating also informs how we physically interact and consume food. Imagine dining in the absence of these sensory expectations where there is no clear identification of what we are eating and how. Is it mashed potatoes or soupy garden peas? Did you reach for a spoon or is it a lollipop? 

In this exercise, your team will design a menu for a blind tasting using only simple, available ingredients. The goal is to create an empathic dining experience that sheds light on how senses are amplified in direct response to the absence of another. Furthermore, your team will present a novel and surprising multi-sensory experience that redefines food tasting. 

Brainstorm (20 min)

1. What happens to our senses when we cannot see the food we are eating?
2. Generate a list of 10 sensory expectations related to food.
3. What are social aspects of dark dining?

Part One - 3 bite-sized experiences (1 hour)

You will have 5 different ingredients to work with: a 1/4 lemon, 1 slice of bread, 5 M&M's, 2 baby carrots, & 1/2 banana. 

Using only the tools available for this activity, your team will come up with 3 bite sized dishes. The 3 dishes must meet the following criteria:

• Original ingredients should not be easily identifiable
• Each dish must be different and unique in form, aroma, flavor and texture
• At least 1 dish should transform the state of the ingredient (ex. liquid to solid or powder to jello, etc.) 
• The names of the dishes describe the way it was prepared or the story of its journey rather than alluding to the ingredients
  • '‘Upper nobility embraces the French underworld in a deep dark red river of sensuality’ -Unsicht-Bar's beef menu description-
• Bonus challenge: All 3 bite size dishes come together, compliment each other

Part Two - Tools for eating (30 min low-fi , 30 min hi-fi)

Create a custom utensil or dishware for one of the three dishes. Reconsider and redesign preconceived functions of these tools. For example, a sugar spoon that dissolves as it is stirred into your beverage, a mold that compacts your crushed ingredients into a perfect cube, a funneled plate that catches all the fall out contents from a taco.