one8 Commune, Golf Course Road

Went to this place and the ambience food music everything was great. If you are around here than this is definitely a good place to hangout with loved ones or friends or even families. We tried their lotus root chips which were different and good in taste. Then tried there be pizza which was okay and dumplings were great. Overall it was a good experience

Let me be honest with you from the outset. When a celebrated sportsperson opens a restaurant — and in India, that almost always means a cricketer — my first instinct is polite scepticism. There is a long and somewhat inglorious history of celebrity-endorsed dining in this country. The food tends to be secondary; the Instagram opportunities very much primary. You go once, you take the photograph, you tell your friends, and you never go back. The restaurant, in turn, survives on the relentless machinery of hype until even that runs dry. Which is why One8 Commune, Virat Kohli’s restaurant brand, genuinely took me by surprise. Not because it is perfect — it isn’t — but because it is, in several meaningful ways, actually trying. And succeeding. The newest outpost on Golf Course Road in Gurugram is a handsome space. There is a generosity to it, an ease, the kind that takes real money and real thought to achieve without looking like it cost either. The lighting deserves a special mention — it is warm without being amber-heavy, bright enough to actually see your food (a radical concept, one feels, in the dimly-lit world of contemporary restaurant design) but atmospheric enough that a Sunday lunch stretches effortlessly into early evening without you quite noticing. The interiors carry that well-travelled, globally-influenced aesthetic that Kohli himself seems to embody: clean lines, confident materials, not trying too hard. The service, too, is worth noting. There’s a fine line between attentive and intrusive, and the staff here navigates it with more grace than you might expect. Now, to the only thing that actually matters. I began with the Tomato Parmesan Shorba — and I say ‘began’ with some intention, because a good soup at the start of a meal is a declaration of intent from a kitchen. This one announced itself well. Spicy, in the manner of a good Indian tomato soup rather than a thin European bisque, it had that pleasing creaminess at the top — a froth, really — that softened the heat without drowning it. The Hot Pot — served for two, built around a spicy Tom Yum broth — is the dish I would return for. It arrives as an event: the broth bubbling, the accompaniments arranged around it with some care — rice sticks, pak choi, mushrooms, edamame, chicken — and you get to choose your protein from among tofu, chicken, or prawns. There is something wonderfully democratic and convivial about hot pot dining; it slows a meal down, makes conversation inevitable, demands that you pay attention. The Hot Stone Bowl — assorted vegetables, water chestnut, mushrooms, hot garlic sauce, jasmine rice served sizzling on a stone — was a textural pleasure. The water chestnuts added that crunch that so much Asian cooking uses to such good effect; the garlic had been cooked long enough to mellow into sweetness rather than sharpness. It was, in the best sense, a comforting dish: the kind that asks nothing complicated of you but rewards your attention. And then, the 20 Layer Chocolate Cake. I am, as a rule, suspicious of desserts that lead with a number. Twenty layers implies engineering more than baking. But I was wrong to be wary. The mud sponge was dense and properly chocolatey — not the faint chocolate-flavoured sweetness that passes for chocolate cake at too many restaurants — and the ganache between the layers kept everything moist without the whole thing becoming a cloying collapse. The vanilla anglaise alongside was elegant, a quiet backdrop that let the chocolate do what chocolate should do. It was a genuinely good dessert. The Verdict One8 Commune, at its best, is a restaurant that earns its popularity rather than merely inheriting it from its owner’s celebrity. The menu is genuinely ambitious in its breadth — perhaps too ambitious; the risk with a kitchen covering this much ground is that things slip through the cracks on a busy service — but the dishes I tried were largely well-executed, and in a couple of cases, were actually exciting.

This place serves one of the best ambience out of all outlets. The ambience and vibe is really good. It has beautiful decor with lantern lights with dark wooden ambience. The food was not too good but was fine. We tried Thai noodles and flat bread which was basic in taste only. The dessert was still better. You can go there for a good time with your friends and family or even with larger groups the space has ample seating available.