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If you’re on Foodie-Tok, chances are that you’ve come across a video of The Lavaux, a romantic Swiss restaurant and wine bar in the West Village that has some of the best Swiss cheese offerings in the city. But recently, it’s gone viral on TikTok for its “Secret Message Party,” where they encourage strangers to send each other anonymous notes on Tuesday nights.
The note-passing party is the baby of general manager Christian Stemmer, who got the idea two years ago while traveling through his native Switzerland and ate at a restaurant where people were sending notes to other tables. He decided that something like that would probably do very well in New York, where most of us are starved for deeper human connection. “New Yorkers are all about new experiences,” Stemmer tells Time Out. It wasn’t until recently, though, that a couple of videos of the note-passing party went viral and now, people are starting to make reservations weeks in advance.
He recommends coming with a group of three to four friends, ordering some Swiss wines and their fondue as an appetizer while you wait for the notes to start arriving. He tells me he never reads the notes, but that he’s pretty sure some pretty crazy things have happened, including post-dinner threesomes.
Naturally, we had to try it out for ourselves. Here’s a play-by-play of how it went.
7pm
I was seated at an open table in the middle of the restaurant, which almost gave me a heart attack because I was there alone and my alone-ness would become known to the entire restaurant. I ordered a glass of red Swiss wine and looked down at my phone at old text messages as more and more groups of friends, mostly women in their 20s, started to come in.
In my head, I was already rejecting the experience—I’ll just finish this glass of wine and leave, I thought—which was me protecting my ego. What if I don’t receive any notes? What if no one finds me interesting? Or worse, what if people think I was a “pick me” for coming alone and sitting at the center of the restaurant? Embarrassingly, the thought of it all horrified me, and I felt like I was sitting at the weird kid table in the high school cafeteria all over again.
7:30pm
One of the waitresses came over and set a pen and notepad on my table. She explained that I could write a note to whoever I wanted, and I could just describe the person I wanted it delivered to. Smartly, they would do a few rounds around the restaurant before handing them the note to make it less obvious that I was the one who had sent it.
Near me was a table that looked like two people on a date, so I wrote my first “safe” note: Are you two a couple? How did you meet?
I ordered another glass of wine.
7:45pm
I received the note back from the couple I initially messaged. We met on Hinge and have been together four years, they wrote. Evidence that the apps can work!
Then, I finally got my first note. Did you also come here because of TikTok? I turned around to see if anyone was looking over at my table, but no one was. Kind of LOL, I wrote. I’m here for work. How did you hear about this?
I chugged my wine and ordered the Chalets Pasta, which is The Lavaux’s fusilli pasta served with creamy gruyere sauce and slices of ham.
8pm
This is when the messages really started to roll in—all of a sudden, everyone wanted to ask me questions! Are you here alone? Who do you wish you were here with? Someone asked. Honestly, I’m glad I’m alone I needed a break from my friends, I responded, half jokingly. But then it dawned on me that there was nothing stopping me from being completely unhinged. I could come up with any story I wanted, be whoever.
Are you a natural flirt? Someone asked.
When was the last time you felt truly happy? Asked another. I thought about coming up with a whole story about how I’d just been dumped by the love of my life who was supposed to be there sitting with me, and that I would never truly be happy again, but decided that would be in bad faith. Last week, I said, which was the honest answer. It was my birthday!
8:16pm
I got another note: They really seated you in the middle LOL.
I couldn’t tell if it’s a roast?
8:20pm
I got my most fun message: F*ck, Marry Kill: Joe Biden, Trisha Paytas, Austin McBroom.
8:30pm
“This is the popular table!” the waitress serving my table, a bubbly Swedish-Colombian student named Orfilia, told me as she handed me even more notes. To my utter and pleasant shock, I had a small pile of notes stacked to my right that I still hadn’t gotten to. Orfilia told me about how she’s been a messenger for these parties for a year. “There’s a lot of people telling their secrets,” she tells me. “Crazy drunk stories, crazy sex stories—everything you can imagine!” She told me that sometimes people do go up to each other after dinner or send each other their numbers, but for the most part, people just leave without ever finding out who their secret senders are.
8:45pm
Orfilia confessed that she was the one who had sent me the F**k, Marry, Kill prompt and we laughed about it. At this point, I was three Swiss wine glasses in and ready to get home. Just before I left, I received another note. I saw you hitting it off with the waitress, the anonymous sender pointed out. Are you into her?
It’s been a long time since anyone assumed I was straight, and I was problematically flattered by it, but it probably had everything to do with the fact that they couldn’t hear me speak.
No girl, I wrote. I’m gay! With that, I gave the note to a waitress, dramatically pulled my Zara puffer from the coat rack, and left.
9pm
On the L train back to Brooklyn, I pulled the notes and counted—in total, I received just over 10. I realized that it had been a while since I’d felt so present and had this much fun in a room of strangers while having dinner on my own.
If you want to have your own note-passing experience, you can make a reservation here.
