Could this really be the coolest place in Berlin? It didn’t look promising: a plain burnished-steel door set beneath a railway bridge on the northern side of the Spree, across from Friedrichstrasse station.

On the other side, though, was one of the city’s much vaunted “secret” nightclub-cumrestaurants, the latest trend in a trend-obsessed town. I took a deep breath, turned the handle and stepped inside.

Berlin is hardly alone in having a network of hard-to-find eateries.

The world is awash with ad-hoc supper clubs, ephemeral pop-ups and “underground” restaurants, advertising their wares on Twitter or Facebook. But Berlin has more form on this than most cities, as Till Harter, who is writing a history of the capital’s club scene, explained to me.

Where the world's best chefs go to eat

From street shacks to Michelin stars, here's where the biggest names in the culinary world like to go

• Rick Stein's foodie tour of Sicily

• Raymond Blanc: my Provence love affair

China's penis restaurant

There are several varieties of steamed, roasted and boiled penis at Beijing’s quirkiest diner

• The world's wildest delicacies

Britain's best cocktail bars

Even New Yorkers know it: Britain’s cocktail bars are best - and these are the cream, says Nick Redman

• London's martini time

• London's coolest hotel bars

Related Links

• Jewish past and present in Berlin

“In the 1930s, many of Berlin’s cabarets and satirical supper clubs went underground when they were banned by the Nazis. Immediately after the war, you had hard-currency black-market places in both the East and the West.

When the wall came down, the old buildings in the East were used to create temporary jazz bars, clubs and restaurants, few of them legal. What’s happening now is just a continuation

of the fact that Berliners love an incognito, in-the-know place; it’s in their DNA, and once the secret is out, they move on.”

In that case, it is likely that Cookie, a British-born Berlin nightlife entrepreneur, will be ready to move on soon, because his new place is doing a roaring trade. Since 1994, he’s opened bars, clubs and coffee houses, always publicised by word of mouth, always off the beaten track. His current project, a restaurant called Cookies Cream (00 49-30 2749 2940, cookies-cream.de; Tue-Sat, 7pm till late), is tucked down a dumpster-lined alley behind the Westin Grand Hotel — look for the corona of light bulbs above an anonymous door.

Upstairs, over the Cookies nightclub, is a large postindustrial space, the concrete and brick softened by low lighting and extravagant flower displays. Here, diners are treated to a menu of inventive and tasty vegetarian food at £25 for three courses. Splendid, and satisfying — for once, I didn’t crave a kebab on the way home, as I often do after vegging out for a night.

The throb of house and electro music from Cookies’ speakers betrays its club heritage. The soundtrack at Rodeo — Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue — was a little more to my taste. To access Rodeo (5a Auguststrasse; 163 162 0168, rodeo-berlin.de), you open a graffiti-splattered door set in railings spanning a pockmarked archway and pass into a darkened courtyard.

Cross the cobbles (in my case to the accompaniment of a thrash-metal band rehearsing) and head for the red lights. Upstairs, you will be led into a stunning domed dining space. Once a prewar post office, it’s now scuffed and flaking but still magnificent.

The food holds its own against the drama of this faded grandeur. There are set menus from £22 and up; I had a quartet of salmon, a huge piece of monkfish on “octopus bolognaise”, and a kind of berry soup for dessert. On Fridays and Saturdays, at about midnight, the venue segues into a club, with a fresh crowd admitted, tables cleared and DJs taking the night in a dancier direction.

Times recommends

• New York hotels on sale in January
• Skomer Island, Wales: Britain's best job?
• Red Sea: the complete guide