Blind Tasting: Foodies Experience Hulu Without Benefit of Sight in Lead-Up to Chi Fan for Charity

Chi Fan for Charity | Sep 17, 2019 8:30 am | Add a comment | 132 reads

Ten foodies, journalists, and KOLs dined blindfolded with a special sight-impaired guest last week at Hulu in an event to raise awareness for this year's Chi Fan for Charity (CFFC) funds recipient, Bethel.

Founded in 2003, Bethel helps visually impaired orphans receive education and better care. Over the last 16 years, Bethel has helped over 2,000 children.

Joining the diners was Li Shuang, a blind graduate of Xinjiang Medical University who worked at Bethel for 10 years. She's an avid traveler – having visited over 40 countries – and was happy to share her tips on dining without sight.

Each of the diners donned blindfolds for the duration of Hulu's four-course meal, experiencing a variety of textures, aromas, and dining utensils.

As would be expected, the diners – many of whom write about food on a regular basis for Beijing media – developed a new-found appreciation of the challenges of dining without the aid of sight (as well as the challenge of not being able to take selfies and Instagrammable food photos).

Hulu developed a special menu for the occasion, providing a wide variety of tactile sensations to challenge the diners. Each course used a different utensil, which the blindfolded diners needed to find before they tucked in.

Hulu maitre d' Rutger Wildenborg announced each course in advance and carefully told diners where to find their dish in front of them, as well as their utensils.

The first course was a mini cauliflower soup paired with buttered bread. The diners did surprisingly well with the soup, none of it getting tipped over... or ending up in their laps.

The next course – a cheese croquette and a mini apple foie gras – are designed to be eaten with toothpicks. This proved to be a bit of a challenge as the dense, delicate foie gras easily fell from the toothpick if it was not pierced dead center.

For the third course, diners were presented with their biggest challenge yet: using a knife and fork to sample slightly-larger-than-bite-sized portions of tenderloin with black pepper sauce and mackerel.

More than a few diners found themselves lifting their fork to their mouth sans morsel, which had slipped off en route.

Served on the side was Hulu's famous sweet potato fries, which were eaten with the fingers – perhaps the easiest task of the day for the blindfolded.

Finally, for dessert, Hulu served a mini "pana colada" and a small dish of strawberry ice cream. The dessert was also a challenge, especially the creamy pana colada, which was easily mashed into dozens of tiny, tasty morsels by an unguided fork stroke.

After all was said and done, the foodies walked away not only with their bellies full from a fantastic meal, but more importantly, with a newfound appreciation of the challenges associated with living with blindness.

CFFC and Bethel would like to extend a special thank you to Hulu, part of the TRB Group, for hosting the meal. Hulu and TRB are also regular participants in Chi Fan for Charity, which takes place for the 11th consecutive year on Saturday, Nov 9.

You can find out more about Hulu as well as TRB's other award-winning restaurants by following their WeChat account below:

And don't forget to start assembling your guest list for Nov 9 – tables at the 50-plus participating restaurants (which also includes the legendary CFFC afterparty) go on sale on Sep 23. Want to host a table? Find out all about that here.

In the meantime, be sure to follow our official WeChat account to keep on top of all CFFC news by scanning this QR below: