One of the Most Exciting Meals I’ve Ever Had Started in a Sports Bar Bathroom. Trust Me, You’re Going to Want a Reservation.

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Though the speakeasy as a modern concept is now a quarter-century old, there’s still something charming about a hidden bar behind a clever entrance. I’ve been to speakeasies where unmarked doorways appeared as if they led into hot, mechanical rooms. Even the old bar-behind-a-bookshelf trick never loses its wonder. I’ve used passwords, pass codes, special knocks that revealed clever drinks from thoughtful bartenders, who helped re-create that sip of historical significance, harkening back to a time when absurd laws meant it was time to skirt them.

But ever since I cut back on drinking, I’ve had less interest in speakeasies, especially when most seemed to skip the nostalgia element to focus more on being clubs that appear in influencers’ videos.

While a hidden pop-up restaurant opening in some abandoned warehouse always appealed to me, when I first heard about permanent, hidden restaurants a few years back, I was dubious. What was a hidden restaurant other than a speakeasy—without the history—serving food and designing their entrance to go viral? But in researching a book that I’m writing about my great-uncle and other Americans who volunteered in the late 1930s to fight against Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War, I heard him and many Jewish New Yorkers—they were the largest demographic of the 2,800 Americans who had gone overseas to defend the Spanish Republic—describe their best meal in Spain taking place inside a secret restaurant that served up traditionally Jewish food. In fact, many private supper clubs have operated out of view of the law to avoid bureaucratic red tape in the form of restrictive licensing or zoning laws. So, like the speakeasy, hidden restaurants, I discovered, had both a history and an allure.

I started creating a list of secret restaurants, though not all of them appealed to me. Some were gimmicks; others were secret dinner parties where the chefs dressed in bear outfits. A few sounded like the food mattered little, and it was more about finding a spouse. What I wanted were hidden restaurants that served exceptional food.

On a sweltering Friday in July when the skies smelled like smoke, I walked to the corner of Broadway and 32^nd Street to where New Yorkers scurried out of the subway station. Most people didn’t notice it, but a red Michelin star and the word Nōksu were projected onto the black wall above the staircase. I descended into the subway. Through the bars of a cage, against another black-painted wall, I saw two Michelin plaques from 2024 and 2025 with the word Nōksu glued to the wall. For most subway riders emerging into Koreatown, “Nōksu” could have meant anything: supply closet or control room. And even to those who knew what a Michelin star meant, the plaques looked like they could have been the work of some prankster with strong glue, poor spelling, and a message for a girl (or boy) named Sue. Next to the plaques was a black door. The doorknob had 12 push buttons that required a code. I stood there for a minute and watched the door. None of the New Yorkers even stopped to try it, but then again, in a subway, most New Yorkers operated by their own code: touch as few things as necessary.

I opened the message app on my phone and found the six-digit combination that would grant me access to what was once a subterranean barbershop with plenty of windows. After construction, all the windows were cemented over, and it’s now a fully hidden restaurant that serves a 10-course menu of fine Korean food. A Marvin Gaye song played when I pushed through the two sets of curtains. I had gone from chaotic pedestrian traffic to a first course that included an artful rice flower with shrimp tartare, a sliver of sea urchin, hints of Korean fermented chili paste, and the flavors of kombu.

Nōksu, I learned, means “of the earth” in Korean. While it referred to the ingredients so artfully displayed, tucked into a hidden fold of New York City, I felt, in my own way, of the earth, too.

After Nōksu, I expanded my search. In Indio, California, home to Coachella and an otherwise sleepy city sitting on the eastern edge of greater Palm Springs, I found a busy sports bar, where everyone went for beer and wings and trivia. But I had a reservation. The host said, “Follow me,” and brought me into a bathroom with a row of stalls for both genders. I had a million questions as we walked 20 feet to the far side of the restroom. But how many questions did Alice get to ask of the White Rabbit?

The door looked as inviting as a mop closet. The host opened it. On the other side was Italica, a whimsical and elegant Italian restaurant. The restaurant had an enormous photograph of one Italian star biting the leg of another. I found myself sitting before beef carpaccio with chili aioli and crispy shallots, chicken Milanese, and house-made ravioli. And then I found myself on the other side of the bathroom again, wondering if any of this had happened.

A few days later, I visited the Taco Stand in Encinitas, California. A line had formed down the block for their fresh corn tortilla tacos. When I received my tacos, I bit into the nopal (cactus) taco, only to receive a jolt of déjà vu. But I had never eaten in Encinitas before. Though largely a Southern California chain, owner Julian Hakim had opened a few stores elsewhere, including the largest Taco Stand, in Wynwood, Miami. I realized then that, years earlier, I had been to his Miami Taco Stand.

“I had a crazy idea to put an eight-seat sushi bar at the back” of the Miami Taco Stand, Hakim told me. “My uncle said, ‘Where are you going to put the sign?’ ” (Hakim co-owns his restaurants with his uncle.) “No sign.”

In the busy Taco Stand in Miami is a wooden door with another keypad that ostensibly leads to nothing of interest. But through that door is Hiden, a 14-course omakase restaurant that I had been completely unaware of when I’d visited the Taco Stand years ago.

“Walking through a loud Taco Stand, you feel like you’re in Mexico,” Hakim said. “Then you go through the door and there’s the Zen of Japan. It’s such a contrast. You don’t forget that.”

I was part of the 99 percent—Hakim’s estimate—who went in for his tacos and completely missed the omakase element. The news left me feeling somewhere between phenomenally frustrated and laughably confused, like I’d hiked across Africa, reached Egypt, and photographed the pyramids from the sandy, desert floor, only to return home to be asked: “Why didn’t you take the elevator to the top of the Pyramid of Giza for the sensational views?”

“There’s an elevator?”

But then after the surprise of having missed the entrance to Hiden had settled in, I was glad to have been fooled. No one really wants to know how the magician does his magic. If everything is obvious, then nothing is fascinating.

Of the hidden restaurants that I actually found, people often asked, “Wasn’t it just a gimmick? A marketing trick? A counter-counterculture element of some business plan?”

That feeling I had at Nōksu, moving from a loud, noxious, busy subway station where a man dug through a trash can into a tranquil, elegant restaurant where chefs delicately tweezered at the food was like stepping through the wardrobe into Narnia. But instead of Turkish delights, there had been petit fours with anchovy crispy rice bonbons and coconut Meyer lemon dongchimi. And the people on the other side of the door just kept walking past, their shoulders grazing the portal.