Just tell ‘em Diddy sent you

FROM Day One, it has been Manhattan’s deliberately worst-kept secret. You walk into what looks and feels like a gritty taqueria, pass through a door labeled “no admittance -- employees only,” teeter down a treacherous set of stairs, pass through a steamy kitchen where the queso is flying and are escorted into a stage set of a restaurant somewhere on the Mexican border, deep beneath the streets of SoHo.

There you’re surrounded by a wildly mixed crowd that might include Salman Rushdie or Anna Wintour or Sean “Diddy” Combs, all making serious work of tequila and Tecate, a few tucking into tostadas and quesadillas.

It’s an only-in-New-York scene. In a city that has had a fascination with speak-easies since Prohibition, La Esquina has redesigned the template for an increasing number of heirs to the secret wine cellar in the “21” Club, the one that dates back to the days of Eliot Ness. Anyone can drink openly at a sidewalk cafe. But the ban on smoking in public places has apparently sent a subliminal message: Alcohol could be next. Get thee to a cellar if you want a margarita, while you still can. Within blocks of La Esquina, other bars have opened with “secret” rooms that are immediately known to anyone who picks up a newspaper or logs onto websites such as gawker.com or eater.curbed.com. Blue Owl and 24 Prince both have private spaces, although neither has drop-in allure (one has to be reserved for a minimum of 15 people, the other opens when business demands it). In the East Village, Tim Robbins is among the backers of the Back Room, a lavish bar with a hidden entrance. Even in Midtown famed chef Gray Kunz has just announced that his next venture will evoke a speak-easy, with a vintage entryway leading to a bar with classic cocktails and reinventions of finger foods such as oysters Rockefeller.

The city has never been safer, and it has even come into the 21st century by allowing wine and liquor to be sold on Sundays. (The law was changed in May, 2003.) Yet hordes are flocking to what are essentially bunkers to do their imbibing.

When La Esquina opened last July, it had all the hype of a hip-by-night trendoid trap. The phone number was unlisted, a dragon lady was posted at the “secret” door to turn away the imperfect and tales of the snubbed were floating wanly around town. But today, months later, it still turns up with Page Six regularity in the gossip columns and on online forums (was that really Jake Gyllenhaal with Eva Mendes the other week?) During Fashion Week last month it was attracting parties of the fabulous, with Rushdie and his wife Padma rubbing midriffs with Bono.

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Are you on the list?

THE Studio 54 aura keeps many people away, yet what keeps the place afloat is democracy in drinking. At this point, anyone who is willing to reserve two weeks in advance can get in at prime time. The daring can try their luck anytime with the doorkeeper with the clipboard.

Even at a less than ideal table within whiffing distance of the designed-to-be-rustic restrooms, La Esquina (Spanish for “the corner,” the name still on the deli upstairs that has been converted into the taqueria through which guests must enter) has a feel like no other Mexican restaurant in town right now.

It is patently fake, and faux sells here -- all New Yorkers love a stage set. In the same way Balthazar, just a couple of blocks away, has come to be the quintessential Manhattan brasserie even though it is a replication of a Paris cliche, La Esquina is theatrical in the best sense of the word.

It could come off as a place made for people who have never been to Tijuana. The decor is decidedly “Touch of Evil,” with dark shadows, rough brick walls, low ceilings with exposed pipes and metal buckets placed ostensibly to catch leaks. It’s all the vision of one of the owners, Serge Becker, who was trying to evoke “old-school, slightly campy” Mexican restaurants along with a little “low-rider gangster imagery.”

But there is nothing whimsical about the liquor list, which comprises nearly 100 tequilas and six Mezcals. At one table, where six men surround one woman, the waiter responded to a request for “something better than Patron Gold” by saying: “You can spend up to $85 a glass.” (Some are sold in 10-ounce carafes.) The aura of connoisseurship at least counters patrons who bray, “The purpose of this restaurant is having fun, and half of that is getting drunk.” At 9 o’clock, it still feels like happy hour.

At one of the long picnic tables in the corner, one end is occupied by a group of young friends, the other by two Mexican families: two couples, four kids, five chairs. There are women who are overdressed but underclothed, guys in gimme caps and Mickey Mantle T-shirts, men in ties and girls in thigh-high boots curled up on the couches in the bar. There are couples on dates, singles on the make, businessmen doing deals.

A few tables do have food: Crab tostadas that are nacho-size but heaped high with excellent crab, avocado and chipotle mayonnaise; an exemplary chorizo quesadilla that is not dripping grease; roasted corn on the cob, coated with mayonnaise and cotija cheese and charred to a crisp; head-on shrimp glazed with honey and lime.

Much of the same food is available at a small sidewalk cafe directly upstairs, around the corner from the decoy taqueria, which serves until 5 in the morning. All are owned and operated by Becker and his team. But the experience would be completely different without lights, sound, action.

Becker is no stranger to dinner and a show; he also owns Joe’s Pub in the Public Theater, known for its live music. He said he and his partner, Derek Sanders, live upstairs from La Esquina and came up with the idea of opening a place that would serve the kind of Mexican food he learned to love while living in L.A. some years ago: “basic, clean, not heavy,” unlike much of what New Yorkers know too well.

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Secret attraction

BECKER is just as much an aficionado of speak-easies but says he never intended secretiveness to be the main attraction. “It does have a certain charm to walk through the kitchen,” he said. “It’s like being led into something more private.” The stagecraft extends right into that kitchen, where half a dozen cooks and a few dishwashers are all costumed in bandannas and going about their tedium with the audience in mind.

At a time when Manhattan has a surfeit of margarita mills, La Esquina has found a way to stand out while capitalizing on high-end tequila’s current cachet. Having a gatekeeper who admits only names on the reserved list also keeps the crowd manageable, which helps dispel any firetrap feelings a New Yorker eating deep in a basement might be fighting off in a city kept on edge by “if you see something, say something” warnings blaring constantly in subways.

What is most telling about the place, though, is that as you walk toward it down Lafayette Street on a warm night, the big, battered, brightly lighted sign on the building looks just like a movie marquee. Only as you get closer can you see that the “feature films” are “tacos, tortas, cerveza.” It’s about food, but it’s really about the show.