About Restaurant Openings Around DC
A guide to the newest places to eat and drink.
The Naisho Room at the Watermark Hotel, 1825 Capital One Dr., S., Tysons
A new Tokyo-style cocktail bar called the Naisho Room boasts a hidden location in Tysons’ Watermark Hotel with no signs or online menu—”just a whisper of its existence” (and, um, a press release to go with it). The place has been quietly open for a month, but it’s already claiming to be “one of the hardest reservations to secure in the DC area.”
Like many modern day “speakeasies,” the secret bar is very into social media. Among the ways to snag a seat? Follow the Naisho Room on Instagram and tag a friend. The bar says it will DM a select few with an invite. You can also look for pieces of origami in the hotel and around Tysons that have a QR code that will lead you to a reservation request page. From there, the team individually reviews each potential booking.
“Up and down on the elevators inside the hotel, I can hear guests chatting about it. ‘Did you hear there is a secret bar here? How do we get in?’ So we have a lot of requests,” says Elkrim Mebrek, Director of Restaurants and Bars for the Watermark Hotel.
The exact location of the Naisho Room, whose name means “hidden” in Japanese, within the hotel is supposed to remain a mystery up until you arrive. Mebrek says the 40-seat space was previously a storage area—albeit one with sweeping skyline views.
Once inside, you’ll find elevated Japanese bar bites from chef Hobin Kim, who helms the hotel’s sushi and omakase restaurant Wren. On the menu: hand rolls, kamameshi truffled rice pots with wagyu, and sashimi plates such as kampachi with foie gras and jalapenos. Meanwhile, you can sip on Japanese whiskeys, sakes, wines, and Japanese-inspired cocktails such as the “Kira Kira” with bourbon, Fernet Branca, melon liqueur, yuzu, and ginger beer. There will also be live music and DJs on weekends.
No photos are allowed in the space, and the staff gives guests removable stickers to place over their phone cameras. “We want people to be themselves and not feel like someone is taking a picture of them,” Mebrek says. At the same time, he notes “we are in hospitality,” and they’re not opposed to people taking photos of the food and drinks. “We just don’t want them to take pictures of the space or other guests basically.”
I was curious to find out how hard it really was to get a reservation. So, I covertly commented on the Instagram post, waiting to see if I received an elusive DM. Meanwhile, I simply googled “Naisho Room reservation” and was taken straight to a reservation request page, where I submitted an inquiry using a fake name and contact so that I wouldn’t get any special food writer advantage. I’m still waiting on an Instagram invite. But within hours of filling out the reservation form online, I’d heard back from a manager. I requested availability for two upcoming Saturdays… both dates were available.
Jessica Sidman covers the people and trends behind D.C.’s food and drink scene. Before joining Washingtonian in July 2016, she was Food Editor and Young & Hungry columnist at Washington City Paper. She is a Colorado native and University of Pennsylvania grad.
