Secret Garden

Secret Garden is a Nikkei restaurant at Reguliersdwarsstraat 38-40 in central Amsterdam, combining Japanese technique with Peruvian flavours across a dining room, a cocktail bar, a private room and an enclosed courtyard garden. It opened in August 2022 inside a monumental building of roughly 700 m² and suits dinner dates, celebrations and group dinners where the room matters as much as the plates.

Secret Garden Amsterdam at a glance

• Cuisine: Nikkei, the Japanese-Peruvian kitchen that grew out of Japanese migration to Peru
• Address: Reguliersdwarsstraat 38-40, 1017 BM Amsterdam
• Phone: +31 20 247 4060
• Format: Shared plates ordered across the table, plus three set menus for groups
• Typical food spend: €60 to €90 per person for three or four plates and a side, before drinks
• Dress code: Smart casual, actively enforced at the door
• Reservations: Taken for dining only, and worth booking well ahead for Thursday to Saturday evenings
• Nearest stops: Koningsplein tram stop and Rokin metro station, both under five minutes on foot
• Best for: Late dinners, cocktails before or after eating, birthdays and private events for up to 60 people

What type of restaurant is Secret Garden Amsterdam?

It is a high-end Nikkei restaurant that also functions as a late bar. Dinner service runs from 18:00, the kitchen closes between 22:30 and 23:00 depending on the night, and the bar keeps going until 01:00 or 02:00 with resident DJs. That dual character comes from the owners: brothers Roy and Mike Poppes, whose family business operates Escape, De Kroon, Kitchen & Bar van Rijn and Heck’s on nearby Rembrandtplein.

Practically, that means two different evenings are available at the same address. Book at 18:30 and you get a fairly conventional restaurant with a band playing bossa nova on several nights. Book at 21:00 on a Saturday and you should expect volume, a busier bar and a room that keeps filling after your dessert arrives.

Is Secret Garden worth visiting, and who is it for?

Go if you want a design-led dinner with cocktails and some theatre, and if you are comfortable spending restaurant money on raw fish, robata grill dishes and caviar supplements. Tripadvisor reviewers rate it around 4.2 out of 5 across roughly 245 reviews, with the interior and cocktails drawing the most praise and the price level and noise drawing most of the criticism.

Look elsewhere if you want a quiet table for a long conversation, a set-price midweek dinner, or somewhere you can walk into in shorts and trainers after a day of sightseeing. Reviewers regularly mention being turned away or warned at the door over clothing, which is the single most common complaint about the place.

What is on the Secret Garden Amsterdam menu?

The card is built in sections: bites and caviar, open-faced handrolls, ceviche and tiradito, small plates and anticuchos, tempura, robata grill and plancha, sides and desserts. The kitchen introduced a revised seasonal Nikkei card in March 2026, leaning further into wagyu, tuna handrolls and shellfish. Dishes arrive as they are ready and are meant to be shared, so ordering three or four plates each is the norm rather than a starter-main sequence.Sample prices from the restaurant’s published menu, checked September 2026. Menus change seasonally, so treat these as an indication of the price level rather than a guarantee.

Dish	Section	Price
Steamed edamame with volcanic salt	Bites	€8
Guacamole with tostada	Bites	€14
Bluefin tuna open-faced handroll, gochujang and creamy wasabi	Handrolls	€16
Seabass ceviche, sweet potato, corn, yuzu and chili	Ceviche	€22
Wagyu carpaccio, truffle and wasabi	Tiradito	€35
King crab and prawn cakes, crispy quinoa and ají amarillo	Small plates	€17
Black cod, ají amarillo miso	Robata grill	€39
Lomo saltado, Peruvian beef and vegetables	Robata grill	€38
Japanese wagyu A4, per 100 grams	Robata grill	€90
Vanilla ice cream with 10 g caviar and sesame oil	Dessert	€19

Groups can order one of three set menus, listed as The Toucan, The White Peacock and The Jaguar. They escalate in ambition rather than simply in length: The Toucan runs through guacamole, beetroot, tuna tartare, tempura, black cod and lomo saltado, while The Jaguar adds oysters, grilled lobster tail with Nikkei bisque and Japanese wagyu A4. Prices for the set menus are not published online and are quoted when you enquire.

Drinking is a genuine part of the proposition, not an afterthought. The signature list includes the Chicha Sour, made with Pisco Huamani Quebranta, chicha morada, lime and egg white, and The Hidden Geisha, a Nikkei take on a pornstar martini using lapacho-infused pisco with passionfruit and lychee foam. There is also a long by-the-glass wine list, a sake selection running from Masumi Shiro to Dassai 23, and mocktails including a zero-proof Virgin Tiki.

Check the current menu on the restaurant’s website before booking if a specific dish matters to you.

What is the dress code at Secret Garden Amsterdam?

The stated dress code is smart casual. The restaurant does not permit sportswear or beachwear, and specifically excludes shorts, caps and open-toed shoes for men. Security at the entrance can refuse guests whose clothing is too sporty or too casual, so this is not a guideline that gets waved through on a busy Saturday.

In practice, a shirt or blouse with trousers, a dress, or a jacket over a plain top all clear the bar comfortably. Trainers are common in the room but pair them with tailored trousers rather than shorts or a tracksuit.

How to book a table

Reservations are taken for dining only, through the booking form on the restaurant’s website or by phone on +31 20 247 4060. Weekend evenings and celebration dates fill early, and the venue’s size means late slots often remain when earlier ones have gone.

Bar and lounge visits are not reservable, so drinks-only guests arrive as walk-ins and are subject to availability and the door policy. For private hire, the events team is reached through the form on the private dining page rather than the standard booking flow.

Book a table on the official reservations page.

Opening hours and kitchen times

Hours as listed on the restaurant’s reservations page, checked September 2026. Bites are served before dinner service begins.

Day	Venue open	Kitchen
Monday to Wednesday	18:00 to 01:00	Dinner 18:00 to 22:30
Thursday	18:00 to 01:00	Dinner 18:00 to 23:00
Friday	12:30 to 15:00 and 18:00 to 02:00	Lunch 12:30 to 15:00, dinner 18:00 to 23:00
Saturday	12:30 to 15:00 and 18:00 to 02:00	Lunch 12:30 to 15:00, dinner 18:00 to 23:00
Sunday	12:30 to 15:00 and 18:00 to 01:00	Lunch 12:30 to 15:00, dinner 18:00 to 22:30

One caveat worth knowing: the restaurant’s contact page lists a 17:30 opening on Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings, which conflicts with the 18:00 time on its reservations page. If you want the earliest possible table, confirm by phone.

Getting there by tram, metro or foot

• Tram: lines 2 and 12 from Amsterdam Centraal to Koningsplein, then about three minutes east on foot
• Metro: Rokin station on the North-South line, roughly five minutes away
• On foot: 15 to 20 minutes from Amsterdam Centraal heading south through the canal belt
• By bike: racks on Reguliersdwarsstraat fill up early in the evening, so allow time to park further along the street or towards Koningsplein

Where can you park near Secret Garden?

There is no dedicated parking at the restaurant, and Reguliersdwarsstraat itself is a narrow, busy street in the centre. The closest practical option is a paid underground garage near Rembrandtplein, around seven minutes away on foot. Central Amsterdam garages are expensive and fill on weekend evenings, so prebook a space or use a park-and-ride on the city edge and finish the journey by metro or tram.

The four spaces inside

The building is divided into distinct rooms, and which one you are seated in shapes the evening more than the menu does.

• Green Room: the pre-dinner cocktail space, where most guests start before a table is called
• Garden Restaurant: the formal dining room, with full table service and the most composed plating
• Bar & Lounge: a cocktail bar where you can also eat, set up with oversized suede seating and resident DJs later in the evening
• Garden Room: the private room for up to 40 seated or 60 standing guests, with its own bar and cocktail station

Behind them is the courtyard that gives the restaurant its name, an enclosed garden with wrought-iron furniture under a pergola and mirrored trellis walls that extend the sense of greenery. It is genuinely unusual to have a garden of that size in the middle of the canal belt, and it is the reason lunch service on a bright Friday or Sunday feels like a different restaurant from the same address at midnight.

Live bossa nova and the later hours

Alongside the March 2026 menu change, the restaurant added a resident band playing bossa nova jazz as a fixed part of the week: Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday evenings during dinner, and Saturday during lunch. That is a useful detail when picking a night, because it is the clearest signal of which sittings are built around the table and which are built around the bar.

Resident DJs take over later in the Bar & Lounge, and on Friday and Saturday the venue stays open until 02:00. If you want conversation, take the earlier bossa nova nights. If you want the room at full volume, book Friday or Saturday and stay past 23:00.

What Nikkei cuisine actually is

Nikkei is the cooking that developed among Japanese migrants to Peru and their descendants after the first organised arrivals in 1899, when the Sakura Maru carried Japanese labourers from Yokohama to the port of Callao. Cooks applied Japanese technique to what Peru actually had: lime, corn, ají peppers, sweet potato and an exceptional range of Pacific seafood. Ceviche cured with citrus met Japanese precision with raw fish, and the two traditions settled into one kitchen.

The pairing holds up because the flavour logic overlaps. Soy, miso and dashi supply savoury depth; lime, ají amarillo and chicha morada supply acidity, heat and colour. You can read that directly off the Secret Garden card, where ceviche arrives with yuzu, cod is glazed in ají amarillo miso, and lobster comes with a bisque carrying citrus and Japanese seasoning.

From Rose’s Cantina to Secret Garden

The address has a long hospitality record. Rose’s Cantina opened at number 38 in 1980, absorbed the neighbouring number 40 later that decade, and spent around 35 years as one of Amsterdam’s best-known Mexican restaurants before closing in September 2017. It reopened that November as Roses by SAL, later simply Roses, a South American bar specialising in pisco cocktails, which shut for good in October 2020 during the pandemic.

The Poppes brothers then took on the empty building and brought in Belgian designer Will Erens of Too Many Agencies, whose previous work includes Lolo Amsterdam, SushiSamba London and The Harbour Club Vinkeveen, and who had already designed Escape for the same owners. The renovation covered the exterior and interior, and Erens has described the result as roughly 700 m² of green and gold.

The details are worth looking for: exotic wallpaper in deep greens and blues layered with flowers and foliage, cut-metal leaf work on the main bar under a glass-and-metal canopy, hanging plants across the ceiling, contemporary art among the greenery, and a golden peacock in an ornate cage beyond the bar. Secret Garden opened here on schedule in August 2022 and has since become a fixed name in the city’s restaurant scene, with the same owners going on to open Chez van Rijn and the Mediterranean restaurant The Siren, which even has its own cocktail tribute on the Nikkei list.

Frequently asked questions