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There are several bits of information you might wish to know before going to a restaurant. For example: When does it open? What can you eat there, and how much does it cost? These are just the sort of details that appear on a restaurant’s website, traditionally a digital repository of facts about your prospective meal.
Unless they don’t. Lately, a number of establishments — not under-the-radar mom-and-pops, but chic or pedigreed restaurants, the kind of places that appear on must-try lists — are withholding the details in favor of an air of mystery.
If you are willing to click past the warning that your connection is not private, the website for Warlord, a buzzy Chicago restaurant known for its long lines and defiant lack of P.R., offers only a black homepage promising “a relaxed dining experience in the Avondale neighborhood of Chicago focused on preservation and live fire; from the foundations of family and friendship.” There are hours and an address, but no indication of what might be cooking on the fire.
The landing page for Frog Club, in New York City, which only recently allowed photographs to be taken in the dining room, offers no information other than a link to Resy, a “contact” button and a large image of an aggressively closed door. Saigon Babylon, in Cambridge, Mass., has no website at all, but does maintain an Instagram account. Currently it has nine posts, none of which feature food.
If you are trying to plan your evening and would like to know if there is a vegan option or how much the hamburger might cost, the low-information restaurant can be infuriating.
“I don’t even want to see your menu,” the writer and comedian Josh Gondelman joked on X, observing the phenomenon. “One photograph of a signature cocktail or pasta posted every week is plenty for me! Leave something to the imagination!”
Even food professionals can find themselves frustrated in the search for straightforward information. “It’s almost like it’s a rebellion,” said Adam Platt, the former restaurant critic for New York magazine. “It’s a bunch of petulant children rebelling against the norms.”
“It irks me a little bit,” said Ryan Sutton, the chief critic at the Lo Times and a former restaurant critic at Eater, differentiating between high-end set menus, where diners understand they are paying to be put in the chef’s hands, and more quotidian establishments. “You want to be able to financially plan out your experience.”
But tight-lipped restaurateurs insist they aren’t gate-keeping or being coy for coyness’ sake. On the contrary, by not sharing too many details online, they say they’re trying to revive a long-lost spirit of romance and adventure. The low-information restaurant does not want you to game out your visit: They want you to surrender to the pleasure of it.
“Personally, I think it’s not very exciting to see a place exactly how it is before you even go there,” said Boris Macquin, a co-owner of Zizou, a Moroccan French bar and restaurant in Los Angeles with a vibes-only Instagram account and no website. “It’s not very sexy.”
There are also logistical reasons for why a small restaurant might choose to minimize its online presence. For those with menus that shift seasonally, sometimes daily, a website is “just another thing to maintenance, and that takes a lot of time,” said Mackenzie Hoffman, an owner of the low-information wine restaurant Stir Crazy, in Los Angeles.
At the same time, she said, not posting information actually improves the experience for diners.
“If you’re providing a website with so much information, so many perfect pictures, and you’re setting the scene, the guest is already dreaming up a hospitality experience,” Ms. Hoffman said. “Sometimes it just doesn’t match.”
She understands that some prospective diners may have dietary restrictions, medical or otherwise, and don’t feel comfortable going into their meal blind. When potential customers ask for the menu, Ms. Hoffman is more than willing to share the menu by email or Instagram. “I’m not gate-keeping the information,” Ms. Hoffman said. “A guest just has to ask for it.”
At Warlord, too, the chefs stand ready to accommodate any diners willing to take the leap, vegans and vegetarians included. “Everything we do here is what we would call à la minute cooking,” said John Lupton, a chef and owner; accordingly, they’re prepared to invent on the spot “a whole new dish for someone to make them feel welcome.”
Some prospective guests, he and Ms. Hoffman acknowledge, won’t make it that far. And they’re fine with that. “We don’t need what we’re losing,” Ms. Hoffman said, not unkindly.
Mr. Platt of New York magazine was somewhat persuaded by that logic. The low-information restaurant is, in some sense, a throwback to pre-internet days. It’s saying, “‘You just have to come in and experience us the way one would have 30 years ago,’ ” he reflected. “That makes sort of a weird sense to me.”
“Everything’s accessible today,” lamented Nicholas Bazik, the chef and owner of Provenance, a Philadelphia restaurant with a 20- to 25-course tasting menu for $225. It offers few clues in advance of booking, though a reservationist calls diners “a week or two” before their meal to go over details. In the information age, Mr. Bazik said, “there’s no mystery.”
The fact that mystery happens to be an effective marketing tool doesn’t hurt either — many food obsessives love the promise of a secret. “I think in the grand scheme, it has played to our advantage somewhat,” Mr. Lupton said.
And there is some reason to believe that faced with seemingly infinite decisions, diners are eager to let go, whether they know that about themselves or not.
“I use this term all the time: Guests kind of want to be dommed,” Ms. Hoffman said. “They want to have control taken away.”
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