Any wild ideas for a synesthesia-themed dinner party?

Chichibio — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 07:34:42 -0800

Speak, Cutlery! My flatmate and I belong to a very informal supper club, and it has fallen on us to prepare this Friday's meal. The theme... is synesthesia. Help us make this an unforgettable (and delicious) experience! OK, so our diners aren't going to be really tasting shapes or seeing music^*, but our goal is to overload their senses. We're hoping to get suggestions in three categories:

• Environment We've tossed around ideas like blindfolding everyone for a course, having a break to smell perfumed pillows and covering the knives and forks with different textures. What other methods can we use to heighten the sensory experience without coming off like some weird, unethical psychology experiment? Lighting? Unusual seating? The dinner will be taking place in a spacious ground floor apartment, but we'll be eating in a cozy kitchen area.

• Music We definitely need an amazing soundtrack. There are lots of musicians with synesthesia (Duke Ellington, Rimsky-Korsakov, Billy Joel?) but we'd like to play music that takes full advantage of every frequency. Prog? Experimental? Yodeling? This AskMe has some great suggestions, but if anything else comes to mind we'd love to hear it. Youtube links a plus because we'd love to make a playlist to take us through the evening and be able to share it afterwards.

• RECIPES! We want to engage the spectrum of flavour, the immensity of taste. What recipes combine opposite, counterintuitive or confusing tastes to yummy effect? We'll need everything from starters to dessert. We have intermediate kitchen skills and the standard range of implements, and if possible we'd like to be able to buy everything at your average British supermarket - but lots of exotic stuff is available in London, so fire away.

BONUS POINTS for vegetarian-friendly options because we know that one of the diners is a herbivore, but we'd be happy to serve meat as a secondary main course. Eight people are expected to attend.

Please go wild with your suggestions! My research has turned up a lot of Futurist cookbook stuff, which is generally impractical, as well as "gross" food, but that's not quite what we're after; while the combinations and tastes should be unexpected, we're not looking to make anything inedible. The music and environment stuff are icing on the cake.

While I can only hope you have lexical → gustatory synesthesia, please read my thanks and taste the sweet gratitude!

*Secretly dosing your friends with LSD is just gauche.

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Any wild ideas for a synesthesia-themed dinner party?