A city guide for people who don't need one
Restaurants your neighbourhood friend would text you. Bars that don't have a neon sign saying "bar". Shows in rooms that seat forty people. No algorithms. No sponsored listings. No tourist traps.
Our position
Most city guides are databases wearing a coat of paint. They surface what is popular because popularity is easy to measure and impossible to argue with. A restaurant with 14,000 reviews ranks above one with 200, regardless of which one you'd actually love.
Sidestep starts from a different premise. Too many reviews is a red flag. We cap restaurant results at 10,000 reviews, cafés at 5,000. Anything above that is, by definition, no longer hidden.
Venues are tagged by editors and by locals. Editorial tags are weighted at 1.0 — immutable. User contributions are weighted by tenure and track record. Over time, the guide gets more accurate, not more average.
We make money through affiliate commissions and featured listings — not through ads, not through your data, and not by letting venues buy their way to the top. That's the deal.
We filter by an inverse of popularity. The hidden gem logic is built into the algorithm, not bolted on as a badge.
Every city has a writer. They are not influencers. They are people who live there and have opinions about it.
This is a promise to founding members, written here in public. We will not display advertising. Full stop.
Export them, share them, take them with you. We're a guide, not a walled garden.
London, New York, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, Melbourne. Each one editorially ready before launch. Quality over coverage.
Cities
Founding Members
When we launch fully, founding members get permanent status — including a sequential member number, early access to new cities, and the ability to contribute tags that shape the guide. The product isn't ready yet. That's why we're asking now.
By signing up you're joining a waitlist, not creating an account.
No password required yet.
Your spot is reserved. We'll email you when it's time to set up your full account — probably before you expect it. Until then, thanks for trusting us before we've earned it.