Tucked inside Olive Kitchen near Qutub Minar, The Hidden Club is a true speakeasy that shuns Google Maps and signage. Conceived as an R&D lab for Olive’s mixologists, it seats just four in a kitchen-side room where three bartenders craft experimental cocktails, swap global bar stories, and deliver an intimate, one-off Delhi drinking experience built on secrecy and conversation.
It is a pleasant evening. The kind that promises shower spells in the night. The Qutub Minar sparkles in its night light. To its west is a strip at the head of which squats the stocky Bhool Bhulaiya, and if you scuttle below, you find the designer showrooms of the likes of Gaurav Gupta and Sabyasachi. Heritage and luxury abound. Within this strip, I am supposed to go to a place that is not to be found on Google maps yet, not on any map, for that matter. As such, the place doesn't exist. It is, after all, The Hidden Club (or THC), cloistered somewhere inside the premises of the upscale Oliver Kitchen and Bar in the area.
I enter the premises and, unable to see any directions that might lead me to the place, ask the receptionist. She ushers me through the sea of people dining in the open courtyard of the restaurant; curious glances follow me: “Is he up for an exclusive experience that we do not know about?” Well, precisely. The clandestine nature of the affair makes me feel slightly like Bill Harford from ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ minus a burlesque mask and a cloak.
Through a couple of rooms and a courtyard, passing various frequencies of low and high humming, following my guide in different lights, I finally fetched up at my destination, which turned out to be a roomette within a kitchen. At what is arguably the country’s smallest bar, three personable bartenders welcome me as though I were one of their comrades, reuniting with them in a bunker.
In recent times, speakeasies have grown exponentially in Delhi. However, for an establishment that fashions itself as a speakeasy to truly be one, there is a basic prerequisite that it remains a 'hidden, exclusive, or retro-themed bar.' Most speakeasies in Delhi can be readily found on Google Maps and accessed. As such, THC stands out among the extremely rare list of speakeasies in Delhi that do justice to their foundational concept.
With room just for a party of four, or, at a stretch, five, THC is a tiny cocktail den that was conceived as an experimental R&D space for Olive's beverage team. Olive Group Founder and Managing Director AD Singh, along with other members, thought it a fine idea to open the place for customers on an exclusive basis. Relating THC’s origin story, Singh said, “Harish, our Head of Beverage, had put together an exceptional team of mixologists who were creating cocktails for our brands across India. After a while, they felt the need for a dedicated space for research and development, so we carved out a small room for them within Olive. With their youthful passion, flair, and absolutely no input from me, they went on to create The Hidden Club in that very space.”
While spirits remain at the heart of THC today, the average experience here includes interacting with the three dynamic bartenders, namely Chong Sherpa, Rajat Tolia, and Anmol Chhetri. Over a span of a few hours, depending on your mood for dialogue, they may tell you all about the cocktail scene worldwide, their experience at Diageo World Class, and everything under the sun. By the time I was walking out of the bar, I knew that Chong’s favourite spirit to work with was rum and some of the weirdest cocktail nomenclature along with their origin stories that the three bartenders had come across.
Inside the bar, you'd find a few tall bar stools, a cocktail station, a Marshall speaker playing a fine set of songs, card games, and the bartenders' souvenirs from around the world, for instance, a list of bars in Thailand, including one where every drink contains real insects—" a must-try", according to Tolia. Their low ceiling is a smorgasbord of black-and-white posters of all sorts, from Led Zeppelin to Jimi Hendrix and Tupac.
Another interesting aspect of the bar is its menu, or the lack of it. You have a flyer upon which is a minesweeper-style grid with numbers from 1 to 6 for each drink. The set of drinks on the menu is shuffled every month with a must of two non-alcoholic options. During my time at the bar, the drinks included the eccentric Techno Tea, a non-alcoholic concoction of mugicha (roasted barley tea), soy sauce, honey, and lime, smoked with cherry wood and crowned with a flambéed marshmallow. Equally inventive and almost soup-like in character was the Superbueno, a milk-washed blend of tomato juice, chipotle sauce, coriander, and acids, finished with a cloud of celery air.
Among the alcoholic offerings, the Bitter Monkey reimagined the aperitivo through banana-infused Campari and tonic water, garnished with banana foam atop a banana chip and blueberry. The Mourtade Highball paired Dijon mustard-infused mezcal with pineapple soda and a merlot float, accompanied by smoked cheese and peppercorn. Acid Rain, a stiffish affair, leaned into sharp, savoury notes of vodka, gin, Otto's vermouth, cucumber brine and a bespoke acid solution of tartaric, malic and citric acids, served alongside a pickled onion.
The standout for me, however, was the revivifying Silk Sheets—a rich, spirit-forward blend of cognac, rum, merlot, caramel, raisins, Angostura bitters, and sea salt, elegantly presented with a honey tuile and raisin. Together, the drinks showcased a menu that prized experimentation, technique, and a touch of theatricality without sacrificing balance.
After all of this verve and animation of a wholesome sitting at THC, one wonders why one would return once one has interacted with the bartenders at length and gotten a sense of the offerings at the place; what really is the business model? Singh, in his turn, stresses that “THC doubles up as an R&D space for the Olive group and this gives us the freedom to let our mixologists play and create and have fun without focusing first and foremost on the business model.” One may choose to return with a different set of friends or not, but for the fond owner, “magical evenings are made of many ingredients. I, for one, would love to go back to THC with different friends and share such lovely evenings with them.”
All in all, THC is poised as a genuine speakeasy within the Delhi cocktail culture at the moment, without leaving so much as a trace online. With a space that is only a fraction of the size of Carrie Bradshaw’s wardrobe from ‘Sex and the City,’ it is a unique and exclusive experience, to access which you’d have to pen down a screed to the organisers. As such, you may or may not want to return after you’ve received the experience once, but surely, in the words of Singh himself, it will “continue to be a bar which everyone would like to try at least once.”
Days: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
Hours: 8 pm onwards
Price: Rs 3000++ per person
Seating: 4