Trèsind Mayfair

1 Does the most anticipated Indian opening of the year live up to it?

A new Indian restaurant has opened in Mayfair. Stop the press.

Written by Martin Seymour | Editor, The Mayfair Foodie | About Me

I say that with affection, because Mayfair hardly wants for a decent curry. Five Indian restaurants here hold Michelin stars — Ambassadors Clubhouse joined the list only this February — and at least as many again serve regional cooking good enough to ruin your loyalty to wherever you usually go. Opening another one on this patch is either brave or daft, and I usually have a fair idea which.

Then you look at who is behind it. Trèsind Mayfair is the London arrival of the Dubai group whose sister restaurant, Trèsind Studio, became the first Indian restaurant anywhere in the world to hold three Michelin stars. The man who took it there, Himanshu Saini, leads the menu here too, with Amit Bagyal running the kitchen day to day. Suddenly Hanover Street looks less like a gamble and more like a statement of intent.

It opened in May 2026, and the clatter was immediate — the previews, the breathless posts, the inevitable ‘London’s most anticipated opening’ headlines. I am not here to add to that. I am here to keep a lid on my own excitement long enough to tell you whether the food justifies any of it.

2 From Dubai to Hanover Street

Trèsind opened in Dubai in 2014, the passion project of restaurateur Bhupender Nath and his group Passion F&B. Four years later came Trèsind Studio, a small spin-off built around a tasting menu and a licence to experiment. It collected its first Michelin star in 2022, a second in 2023, and in 2025 made history as the first Indian restaurant in the world to be awarded three.

A Mumbai opening followed. London is the first move outside Asia, and the first real test of whether the Trèsind idea travels.

3 What Does Trèsind Mean?

The name is a compression of the French très — very — and Ind, for Indian. Very Indian. It reads as a boast until you eat there, at which point it starts to sound more like a mission statement.

4 The Room

As you would expect, no expense has been spared on the decor. We were seated in the main dining room, compact but with plenty of space between the tables, and at lunchtime it was filled with natural light from the windows. It is a handsome room — warm woods, brass, nothing shouting for attention — which, given the theatrics that were about to arrive on the table, is probably the right call.

5 The Menu

We were offered two menus: a three-course lunch at £45, or the classic tasting menu at £75, both at the time of our visit. Being famished, we went for the tasting menu. We were hungry in more than one sense — I wanted to find out what has made this group such a phenomenon. The other choice on the menu is the Signature Tasting menu at £138pp

6 The Food

I am not going to give you a blow-by-blow of every course — think of this as a teaser. I am still excited enough by the whole thing that I may spill more beans than I intend to, but I will try to leave some of the surprises intact.

Before a single course arrived, a tall gold vase was set down on our table. Then came the dry ice — not a discreet wisp but a great rolling cloud of it, spilling over the lip of the vase and across the table until my brother had all but disappeared from view. Cherry blossom drifted up through it. It was pure theatre, and I am sorry to report that what it most reminded me of was a nightclub foam party, scaled down to fit a tablecloth. I doubt that was the intention. I enjoyed every second of it regardless.

Amuse-Bouche

pani puri, my picture .Dish created by Himanshu Saini London

Then came the amuse-bouche, and my first encounter with pani puri. A crisp semolina sphere, filled with preserved pear and finished with a piping of whipped feta and a few tiny herbs around the rim, with a little terracotta pot of mint, coriander and rocket water alongside. The instructions were to pour the water in and eat the whole thing in one, which sounds simple enough until you get a proper look at the size of it. I managed, though not with much dignity. The shell shatters, the pear comes through sweet, and then the herb water arrives behind it with a proper hit of spice. A lot happens in one mouthful.

Soup

On the menu this is listed simply as soup. What arrived was mushroom chai, which reminded me a little of the amuse-bouche we had at Willett’s. A teacup held sliced mushrooms, and from a beautiful teapot came a king oyster mushroom broth, poured at the table. That delicate cup was packed with flavour. It tasted like an autumn walk in the woods.

Alongside it sat a pretty za’atar cannolo — a half shell of pastry filled with oyster mushrooms, chutney, za’atar and a hot sauce, topped with what looked like a flower bed of sorrel leaves. As with so much on this menu, it looked good enough that you felt guilty biting into it. The guilt lasted precisely one mouthful. It was the perfect foil to the earthy broth.

Chaat

Next came the ghewar chaat, which arrived looking less like dinner and more like something from a milliner’s window. Ghewar is a Rajasthani sweet, a disc of fried batter riddled with holes, and Trèsind has taken it the other way and made it savoury — which plays havoc with your senses, because your eyes have already decided it is pudding before your tongue gets a say. The one perched on top of my bowl was lacy and impossibly fine, half of it flecked green with mint, the other half stained deep pink with beetroot. Underneath, out of sight, was the chaat proper: chickpeas and potato with tamarind chutney, then little jewels of avocado, strawberry and pomelo, and a cool quenelle of yoghurt ice cream. You are meant to break the whole thing and eat it together, which I did with some reluctance. Sweet, sour, cold, crisp and a proper kick of heat, all in the same spoonful. I have eaten a lot of chaat over the years. This was something else.

Kebab

In India the kebab course traditionally sits between the chaat and the main course, and it is not to be confused with the Middle Eastern version, or indeed with whatever you last ate on the way home from the pub. In India a kebab is anything cooked with dry heat and served without gravy. The placement makes sense once you think about it — a dry course sandwiched between two that arrive with sauce.

Ours was a tandoori tiger prawn with buttered asparagus and a hollandaise espuma. The prawn was so delicately cooked that I doubt it did more than kiss the sides of the tandoor, sweet under a mild spiced glaze. I particularly liked the buttered asparagus beneath the espuma. Trèsind tickling the taste buds again.

Main Course

Main course time, and a trio of favourites arrived in no particular order: Bengali kosha mangsho with a green pea kachuri, Alleppey fish curry with Malabar paratha, and butter chicken with butter naan. Alongside them, the most gorgeous black dal.

The kosha mangsho is a Bengali mutton curry, and the meat was cooked to the point of falling apart on the fork. The kachuri beside it is a deep-fried flatbread stuffed with peas. The Alleppey fish curry comes from Kerala in the south — sea bass in a light sweet and sour sauce. The butter chicken needs no introduction from me, except to say that this was no ordinary butter chicken sauce. It had an extraordinary depth of flavour, and it came with a calorie-packed butter naan. Nobody was counting.

Dessert

Pandan payesh,Tresind Hanover Street restaurants,

Last, and in no way overshadowed by the five courses before it, came pandan payesh, a nod to India’s love of milk puddings. Vanilla yoghurt, sour milk ice cream and a milk crisp, resting delicately on pandan-infused cream. As you can see from the photograph, it could almost have been shot in black and white, were it not for the edible silver leaf on top.

7 Drinks

Trèsind has two bars — one upstairs and a recently opened speakeasy downstairs called Tryst — both serving cocktails. We stuck to wine at the table, so I cannot tell you anything useful about either, I can tell you there is no drinks list anywhere on the website, which for a restaurant at this level is an odd omission, and I have no idea whether it is deliberate.

What I can vouch for is the house wine. We had a perfectly agreeable white, and then an Italian Cabernet Franc that was a genuine standout. If the house pour is that good, the rest of the list is worth exploring.

8 Service

When you serve nothing but tasting menus, the delivery and the flow of the courses become the whole game. If kitchen and service are not in harmony, the experience falls apart. Add to that the fact that at Trèsind your server also has to explain each dish, and on some courses advise you how best to eat it, and there is a great deal that can go wrong.

None of it did. The service ran like clockwork, perfectly timed, the staff friendly and knowledgeable throughout.

9 The Verdict

So, does the food justify the noise? On the strength of our lunch, a big yes. What stayed with me was not the theatre, though there is plenty of it, but the thought behind each plate — the ghewar chaat alone would have been worth the trip, let alone the mushroom chai. Mayfair probably does not need another Indian restaurant. It turns out it rather wanted this one, and I am pleased to have got through the door early.

One caveat on all of this: we ate the classic tasting menu at £75. There is a longer Signature Chef Tasting Menu at £138 that we did not try, and until I have, I am not going to pretend to tell you which is the better way to do Trèsind. It gives me a reason to go back, which I did not especially need.