Food
Hide & Eat: 13 Secret Restaurants Around The World
introWhat even qualifies as a hidden restaurant in the internet era? No matter how concealed an entrance, how unusual a location and how restrictive the reservations policy, there’s hardly a culinary secret that can remain truly undiscovered for long. However, finding the hidden restaurants on this list requires at least some degree of hunting (locations) and gathering (information). [Photo: Forbidden Taste/Petr Hricko]
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Hide & Eat: 13 Secret Restaurants Around The World.
Solo Per DueSolo per Due isn’t hidden in the technical sense – signposts guide you towards the smallest restaurant in the world as you approach on public roads. However, as it is located in the small village of Vacone in central Italy, 1.5 hours from Rome, and requires reservations several months in advance, it will certainly remain an alluring mystery to most tourists. Walk-ins are most certainly not welcome, and even if they were, the restaurant could only accommodate two at a time, as the name indicates.
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Hide & Eat: 13 Secret Restaurants Around The World.
Sunday DinnerIf there’s a secret restaurant anywhere in the world that has been running longer than Jim Haynes’ Sunday Dinner, we haven’t heard of it. The American octogenarian living in Paris launched his “salon chez moi” in 1978, and it still takes place every Sunday evening. Your host’s tumultuous life story will keep you entertained for hours, the convivial atmosphere will have you making new friends in no time, and – last but not least – the food prepared by a rotating cast of guest chefs is fantastic value for money.
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Food
Hide & Eat: 13 Secret Restaurants Around The World.
DerriereElsewhere in the French capital, the slightly more intimidating Derrière restaurant is where the achingly fashionable Marais crowd hang out. The dining space mimicking a private apartment is located – as the name indicates – behind a restaurant and bar by the same owners. The entrance to the courtyard leading to the restaurant lies between the two.
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Hide & Eat: 13 Secret Restaurants Around The World.
Marram GrassIf you’re an avid camper, you may come across The Marram Grass on a trip to Wales unaided. Other foodies, however, are unlikely to look for an excellent locavore restaurant in a potting shed on a campsite on Anglesey, an island just off the northwest coast of Wales. Once you cross the bridge connecting the island to the mainland and reach the village of Newborough, however, it’s safe to say the Marram Grass is no longer a secret – locals will happily direct you towards the restaurant.
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Food
Hide & Eat: 13 Secret Restaurants Around The World.
Tokyo Record BarNew York is full of businesses hidden behind, above, underneath or within other businesses. Tokyo Record Bar isn’t even the only record-shop-cum-dining-establishment in the city, but it probably is the most thoughtfully curated of its kind. The small underground Greenwich Village space inspired by Tokyo’s record bars serves food and vinyl, sake, cocktails and beer. [Photo: Noah Fecks]
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Hide & Eat: 13 Secret Restaurants Around The World.
BastionNashville’s Bastion is hidden behind an unassuming garage door emblazoned with a quote from the Neverending Story. It says “never give up and good luck will find you”, presumably implying that good things – like hidden restaurants – are worth searching for. To find this one, hungry diners first have to traverse the large bar of the same name and seek out the unmarked door that leads to the dining space. Don’t give up, and you get to find out if good luck awaits on the other side. [Photo: Hollis Bennett]
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Food
Hide & Eat: 13 Secret Restaurants Around The World.
FiguresThe description of a restaurant hidden at the back of a comic book store probably conjures up a certain image. Erase that from your mind’s eye, because Figures looks – and tastes – nothing like you would imagine. The comic-themed venue in Toronto is filled with stylish nods to everyone’s favourite superheroes, and the ambitious menu takes you from Exposition (starters) through Climax (mains) to Resolution (dessert). However, the result is less teenage bedroom and more stylish urban hangout.
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Hide & Eat: 13 Secret Restaurants Around The World.
Good FortuneToronto has more than its fair share of hidden restaurants, some of them so well-known that they could just as easily count as local favourites. Examples include Good Fortune, a late-night cocktail and snack bar for the party crowd hidden below La Carnita Uptown, and Lo-Pan Cocktail Bar above DaiLo restaurant, which serves Asian-inspired drinks and food.
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Hide & Eat: 13 Secret Restaurants Around The World.
SaltshakerLooking for a hidden restaurant in South America? Search for puerta cerrada (closed-door) dining, a trend that took off in Buenos Aires and has shown no sign of slowing down. If you’re in the capital of Argentina, visit Casa Salt Shaker, the secret dining experience hosted by gourmet expat Dan Perlman – if not, visit his Salt Shaker blog for a round-up of hidden restaurants around the world.
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Food
Hide & Eat: 13 Secret Restaurants Around The World.
TonkaHidden restaurants are a genre of their own in Melbourne, a city filled with laneways – and foodies more than happy to explore their most secret corners in search of delicious feed. New, impossibly cool and hard-to-find locations pop up all the time, but Tonka and sister restaurant Coda are perennial favourites that regularly win awards.
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Food
Hide & Eat: 13 Secret Restaurants Around The World.
MixtapeWe love the idea of treating a tasting menu like a mixtape: compiling individual tracks from different sources into a new, coherent whole. It’s also the perfect food philosophy for a cultural melting pot like Singapore. This is where husband-and-wife team Kenneth Yong and Laureen Goh host their Mixtape Chef dinners in a purpose-built private dining room. Menus are inspired by classic cuisines and flavours from the couple’s global travels and presented like a mixtape of flavours.
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Food
Hide & Eat: 13 Secret Restaurants Around The World.
CuoreSeveral hidden dining spaces in Hong Kong have taken advantage of a change in zoning laws that made many city-centre commercial properties available at low rents. The trend of private kitchens – unlicensed restaurants that operate as private clubs in a legal grey area since the 1990s – is still going strong in the gourmet-crazed metropolis. Try Blueflower Travel Salon, an intimate space brimming with books and artwork, where Chef Andrea serves up 4-course meals along with TED-style talks designed to inspire globetrotting guests to see the world as travellers rather than tourists.
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