The Baxter Inn

One of the best whisky bars in the world is hiding in the basement of a building on Clarence Street, and the only way to find it is to know it exists. There is no sign. No street-facing entrance. You walk into a nondescript loading dock, find a service alley, and descend a fire-escape stairway into what looks like a nineteenth-century underground tavern.

Inside, four hundred and fifty-six bottles line the back wall -- primarily single malt whiskies from Scotland, Japan, Australia, and everywhere else that takes grain and patience seriously. The bar is long, candlelit, and staffed by people who know more about whisky than is strictly healthy. It is consistently ranked among the top fifty bars in the world on international lists.

The genius of the Baxter Inn is the contrast. You are in the middle of the Sydney CBD -- suits, tower blocks, chain coffee shops -- and then you walk through a loading dock and a fire door and you are in a candlelit cellar that feels like it has been here since the convict era. It has not. It opened in two thousand and eleven. But the deliberate absence of signage and the hidden entrance are the point. In a city that loves putting its name on everything, this place does the opposite.

Sydney has a whole ecosystem of hidden bars like this. The Barber Shop on York Street is behind an unmarked door in the back of an actual working barbershop. Eau de Vie is behind a bookshelf. But the Baxter Inn is the one that started the trend, and the descent through the loading dock still feels like you are doing something you should not be doing.

Go after work on a weekday. It fills up fast on weekends and the alley queue loses some of its charm when there are thirty people in it.