New restaurants, bars and, hotels keep popping up constantly. But for all the endless talk about customer experience we, the customers, are still left mostly unimpressed, uninvolved, uninterested. Give us intrigue, drama, something unusual. Please.
So when we saw the early images of a secret pop-up bar, Mr. Simon, in Udine in Northeastern Italy, we paid attention.
The bar was designed by Udine-based Visual Display as the eccentric ‘home’ of Mr. Simon, a botanical alchemist and collector of fine things from his travels. These include cocktail menus from all around the world that you can use to order your drink.
Only invited guests are able to experience this this 25-seat, 50-square metre (540 sq.ft.) home whose address we are not allowed to divulge.
But we can say that it is in a new restaurant (also Visual Display-designed) in a well-known shopping centre.
First you call Mr. Simon to make a reservation and receive an access code that changes every day. Then you need to find the restaurant and the white vintage phone on one of its wall. You dial and are connected to the bar.
If your reservation is confirmed, you will go through the bathroom and broom closet where you ring the bell on a hidden door in the cement wall.
If you are lucky, Mr. Simon’s butler will arrive to let you into his master’s comfortably opulent world of low lights, moody music, mirrors and velvet seating. And imaginative cocktails, of course. 
Intrigue, drama, something unusual. – Tuija Seipell.
