In a nutshell:

A large spacious restaurant with Live music, funny Quotes (at times bordering sexist) & some good food from around the Globe including some real gems.

Address & other details: One night stand

Meal for 2: Rs. 300 onwards

Cuisine type : Vegetarian & Nonvegetarian

Disclaimer: All restaurants / eateries reviewed by YUMMRAJ were visited by YUMMRAJ himself & he has paid for the full Bill & tips also. http://www.yummraj.com does not have even one featured / sponsored reviews. YUMMRAJ believes in going to a restaurant in anonymity, as a normal guest, experience everything & give a honest account of the same to you.

I rate all the food items & then give a final overall rating which is a simple average of the individual item ratings. What the ratings stand for: 5 = Excellent, 4 = Very Good, 3 = Good, 2 = Fair, 1 = Disaster.

Short Description – in case u r in a hurry:

It was a rare occasion when we were hungry & in sector 29 Gurgaon. We didn’t want to go to a place that we had already been to & hence decided on One Night Stand (ONS). It was a day by the way & we were at One night stand.

The restaurant is quite spacious & is neatly done. In terms of ambience & look of the place it was Good but nothing great. Soon after the entrance, there is a huge wall painting on the left side. There were many other framed pictures on the wall & funny quotes as well – some of those were on the borderline of being ‘gender racist’.

During our stay we were surprised to find flies in the dining hall. Not as many as u see in some roadside food shops but I guess 4-5 flies per table. So during our stay at this restaurant, we made our arms exercise by using them as fly-whitters.

The Music was pretty peppy & enjoyable thruout our stay. We were the only people at 2.00 noon in the restaurant. Slowly 3 more groups walked in the next 1.5 hrs.

The Staff members were wearing miami / hawai style colorful shirts with full body print of palms, sea, blue sky etc. In general they were nice guys, pretty polite but a bit new & far from being seasoned. They displayed lack of knowledge on items on menu. We had to either assume half the sentence or play blind.

Example – We tried to understand what is ‘Malai Balai’ and after 3 rounds of explanations we were still trying. Then the chef had to b called in to explain the dish. Any question on food in the menu & the staff were bewildered. Badly needs training. Pretty bad state on this front.

The menu card was very long & diverse. It had items from different countries in the Globe & from different regions in India. The menu was as diverse as Amritsari mutton paya soup, chicken & avocado tortilla soup , salads from Europe, Middle east, Far east , Indian starters, Oriental starters as diverse as salmon maki, mayo Thai curry maki, chilly chicken dry, chicken manchurian ( invented in india. Chinese have not heard about it), Mediterranean food, pizzas, one night stand culinary orgy, Pastas, risottos, fusion food, continental, Indian mains etc.

In oriental section apart from Chinjabi, Chinese, usual thai red & green curry, there were items that r not yet so popular in India like mussamman curryetc. There were 3 pages of non alcoholic beverages on offer as well.

Food was good in general.

Detailed Description – In case u have the Time to NJOY reading:

We started the afternoon with munching on the items in the complimentary Bread basket. it had a very good salsa. Made of tomato, not tomatoeee, hot due to thinly sliced chillies and flavourful due to the herbs added. Good balance of salt and sour. I rate this 4/5.

For Soup we had Amritsari mutton shorba – Indian style lamb trotter broth. It was Lovely. It was a medium density soup that was quite close to a smooth mutton curry gravy. Am not sure of the Amritsari connect but really good, tasty, & robust in terms of both flavors & taste. Looked like it was slow cooked (as expected). Flavors of spices and goat both came out in an excellent manner. I rate this 4.5/5.

Post the soup came Badami be mahi – It was boneless pieces of fish marinated with almond paste and oil. What was that? Uff…… Just awesome . Super juicy, flaky pieces of fish, coated with almond paste. Grilled to perfection. Charred at the surface. The almond made its presence felt and so did the taste of the fish. Just too good. I rate this 4.75/5.

We read the description on the Jhinga afghan ‘just cannot define heavenly flavor of this dish’. Cud not really control our emotions & ordered a second starter. Yes, true to the claim, the flavours were outstanding . The marination was very good and had perfect seasoning as well. The prawns were soft and nice .

However the marination had not entered the prawn and neither did the salt. There was suboptimal salt in the prawn within. As I dipped the prawn in sauce and had, the salt issue reduced. Sprinkling some salt befire every bite wud have done the same as well. If everything were good in the dish, I wud hv given this a rating of 4.5/5 but for the lack of salt I give it 4/5.

For main course we had Lamb zurichoise. It was lamb chunks with mushrooms, fresh cream and white wine, served along with herb rice. I cud see as soon as it was served that the rice was suboptimally cooked & that got confirmed as soon as the food landed in the mouth. It however was directionally good to taste & had the right flavors. It was in the right direction but had serious executional flaws. I give the rice 2.5/5 due to sheer messed up texture.

The lamb was however pretty good. It was soft, had flavors of spice & was good to taste. I give this 3.5/5.

Overall rating for the dish averages out to 3/5.

We also were eyeing Keema pao but were left with no space for any more food. So moved towards the dessert menu.
We ordered Malai Balai which turned out to be layers of mildly sweetened , thick & intense Malai (rabri)with cut fruits inside it.

On top of this brown sugar was sprinkled & probably with a hand-held torch, the sugar was caramelized in the same way as crème Brule. The caramelization turned out funny & a big executional issue. However the malai & its combination with fruit turned out to be awesome & unusual at the same time. Loved it & rate it 4.25/5.

For drink we ordered Guava margarita. It was supposed to have guava juice, Tabasco sauce, lemon, salt and pepper – as per the menu card. However we cud taste almost nothing other than the guava juice. I give this a 2/5.

Rating of food at ONS adds up to 4.1/5 & including the drink it averages out to 3.8/5.

I wud not think twice before going back to eat here – wud like to try out more cuisines. What about u?