On a balmy evening in North Goa, I found myself ascending a narrow staircase tucked above a quiet café in Assagao.Just a discreet wooden door marked by nothing more than curiosity laid Room One, a bar so small it almost feels like a secret, and so considered it could double as a gallery. Designed by artist-designer Siddharth Kerkar, co-founded with Vipin Raman and Bonita Mascarenhas – this one-room speakeasy (yes, literally a single room) perched above a Burmese menu kitchen becomes, in effect, Goa’s most intimate cocktail-gallery.
Warm, diffused light grazed copper and wood in equal measure. A sculpted bar stretched across the room where the metal dimpled and imperfect in all the right ways. Siddharth Kerkar’s fingerprints were quite literally etched into its surface; every dent, every polish mark, felt purposeful. Around it, just a handful of seat brass stools, velvet backs, a single table flanked by curved lounge chairs made it impossible to forget that intimacy was part of the design language. You don’t visit Room One to disappear into a crowd, you come to be present, to feel the craft of a space where nothing is accidental.
There’s an almost cinematic stillness here, broken only by the low hum of conversation and the quiet clink of glassware. The playlist is gentle and exact jazz notes that fall like punctuation between stories. The walls are spare but deliberate: an arresting skeletal sculpture suspended overhead, a few art pieces organized with restraint. Even the shelf behind the bar (a Portuguese-style arch carved from wood and lime) speaks to the house’s Goan heritage. You can sense Kerkar’s designer sensibility in the way history and modernity are coaxed into harmony, never at odds, always in dialogue.
And then there’s Juvin, the bartender, the heartbeat of this single-room universe. Watching him work is part of the theatre. He doesn’t perform in the traditional sense; there’s no flair, no flourish for the camera. Instead, it’s a quiet choreography of precise pours, measured stirs, a gaze that never breaks from the glass. Every cocktail here feels like an artwork: composed, layered, emotionally legible. I started with the Kinky Kerkar gin kissed with yuzu bitters, Fernet-Branca, and tender coconut soda. It arrived translucent and glowing, a coastal breeze in liquid form. The first sip was bright and zesty, the second softer, the third almost meditative.
Next came “Better Call Sid” a mango feni stirred with curry leaves and a dash of tonic, Goa in a glass if there ever was one. It was fragrant and textural, sweet in the beginning, grounded by the herbaceous warmth of the leaves. Finally, the “Miss Behave” made its entrance – vodka, white chocolate, and raspberry woven into a drink that felt both nostalgic and new. It looked like dessert, but it drank like conversation: layered, slow, and just a little dangerous.
As the evening deepened, the light shifted gold bleeding into amber, the copper bar glowing like a forge. Conversation stretched and softened. A couple beside me debated art, another murmured about the architecture. It’s that kind of place where you’re encouraged to think, to observe, to be still. Room One doesn’t court spectacle. Its seduction lies in subtlety: the way the rim of your glass feels cool against your hand, the faint scent of lime from the bartender’s cutting board, the way the light trembles across the metal like slow music.
It’s easy to forget, up here, that you’re perched above Sopó, the Burmese kitchen below. Occasionally, a trace of lemongrass drifts up from the vents, a gentle reminder that the building itself is layered with flavour and story. But in this room, time behaves differently. The intimacy makes you aware of every breath, every sound, every shift in mood. You start to understand that this is what luxury feels like when it stops pretending: tactile, quiet, intentional.
Room One could have been ostentatious. It isn’t. Its luxury is the kind you feel in the weight of the glass, the warmth of copper under your forearm, the patience with which a cocktail is finished before it’s served. What makes Room One exceptional is that it doesn’t pretend to be large. It embraces its size. You feel like you’re in a private studio, not a loud lounge.
Archit Nair (Creative Lead)
About the Author– “Archit writes at the intersection of flavor and feeling, where every dish is a story and every setting, an art. With a sharp palate for detail, he serves the F&B world one well-seasoned narrative at a time.”