Trèsind Mayfair: A Journey Through India, One Plate at a Time
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There are tasting menus that take you through a sequence of courses, and then there are those that ask you to travel. At Trèsind Mayfair, the latter is very much the point. The London debut from the team behind Dubai’s three-Michelin-starred Trèsind Studio is less a formal procession of dishes than an elegantly choreographed passage through India, with Executive Chef Amit Bagyal using food to trace the country’s extraordinary regional diversity.
Set on Hanover Street in the heart of Mayfair, Trèsind arrives with the confidence of a restaurant that knows precisely what it wants to say. The Signature Chef Tasting Menu is its calling card: contemporary, technically polished and, crucially, rooted in memory rather than novelty for novelty’s sake.
Bagyal’s own culinary journey gives the menu its sense of place. Raised in Rishikesh in the Himalayan foothills, he left home at sixteen and spent years travelling across India, stopping at roadside kitchens and absorbing the subtle shifts in ingredients, techniques and flavour from one state to the next. That lived experience is apparent here. This is not an encyclopaedic tour of Indian cuisine, but a deeply personal interpretation of it.
The journey begins with an amuse-bouche that immediately establishes the restaurant’s playful spirit. An arugula pani puri with preserved pears gives the familiar street-food classic a refined, almost jewel-like interpretation, while watermelon with Guntur chilli sambal and petit herbs brings freshness and heat. A mushroom chai with king oyster mushroom and za’atar cannolo follows, earthy and aromatic, setting the tone for what is to come.
Then comes the restaurant’s striking interpretation of ghewar chaat. Traditionally a honeycomb-textured sweet from Rajasthan, here it becomes a savoury composition of avocado, strawberry and pomelo, topped with yoghurt ice cream and the crisp ghewar itself. It is an unusually elegant collision of sweet, sour, creamy and crunchy, and one of the evening’s most memorable expressions of Trèsind’s philosophy: take something recognisably Indian and allow it to become something entirely new.
The journey continues with an Orkney scallop varuval, accompanied by kristal caviar and black truffle. It is an indulgent meeting of sea and earth, marrying the delicate sweetness of the scallop with the intensity of truffle and the saline precision of caviar.
Next, prawns and asparagus arrive with zeera aloo espuma and tomato rasam. The familiar flavours of rasam provide a vivid aromatic backbone, while the airy potato espuma introduces an element of modernist lightness. It is the sort of dish that demonstrates how far Indian cooking can be taken into the vocabulary of contemporary gastronomy without losing its character.
The menu then takes a richer turn with wild duck confit, saag and corn waffle. The confit offers depth and richness, while the saag brings the earthy green intensity associated with northern Indian cooking. The corn waffle adds a quietly playful sweetness and an appealing textural contrast.
One of the more unexpected courses is the tortellini with Gorgonzola Dolce, smoked chicken makhani and chilli jam. Italian pasta meets the luxurious creaminess of makhani, with smoked chicken and chilli providing the dish with a distinctly Indian soul. It sounds unconventional on paper; on the plate, it makes considerably more sense.
The evening continues with a lamb chop, rosemary vindaloo, hasselback artichoke and Goan sanna. Here, the menu turns towards Goa, bringing the characteristic sharpness and spice of vindaloo into an elegant composition. The lamb is beautifully suited to the aromatic sauce, while the delicate sanna offers a softer counterpoint.
Then comes Khichdi of India, perhaps the most personal moment of the tasting menu. The dish draws on twenty spices, representing each of India’s states, and is finished tableside with a dramatic pour of ghee. It is both theatrical and deeply symbolic, bringing together the country’s remarkable regional diversity in a single bowl. For Bagyal, who grew up in Rishikesh and spent years travelling through India, absorbing the food of roadside kitchens and local communities, this is more than a dish, it is a culinary autobiography.
Dessert offers another exercise in reinterpretation. ‘Pandan payesh’ with vanilla yogurt, sour milk ice cream and milk crisp takes Bengal’s traditional rice pudding and strips it back to its essential character while dispensing entirely with rice. Pandan lends an aromatic, almost tropical quality, while the sour milk ice cream brings acidity and restraint. It is an intelligent, sophisticated ending rather than a conventional sugar rush. Finally, the coffee stone arrives as a small closing flourish, a polished little punctuation mark to an expansive meal.
The cocktail list is equally imaginative. An Old Fashioned combines Johnny Walker Black with banana and browned-butter ghee, while a Martini is finished with oyster-shell brine. For those abstaining, a Gimlet built around Seedlip Garden and fragrant Gondhoraj lime offers an especially polished alternative. The Bengali citrus, prized in Indian kitchens but still something of a rarity on British cocktail menus, is a particularly clever touch.
There is, throughout the experience, a sense that Trèsind Mayfair is less interested in proving what Indian fine dining can be than in quietly expanding the conversation around it. The cooking is intricate, but the underlying idea is remarkably simple: India is not one cuisine. It is thousands of regional traditions, ingredients, rituals and memories, each capable of telling a different story.
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