Words by: Kaniz Ali
Trèsind has landed in Mayfair, and London’s fine dining scene will never be quite the same. This is the house that invented “Innovative Indian Cuisine” the real deal, the original, now setting up shop on Hanover Street with chef Amit Bagyal at the helm, turning centuries of heritage into something dazzlingly, unmistakably new. Forget everything you thought you knew about Indian dining: this is precision plating, bold storytelling, and flavour that punches well above its weight, served across an intimate, multi-course tasting journey with covers so limited you’ll want to book now, not later. Brilliant doesn’t even cover it! Trèsind Mayfair is the reservation London’s been waiting for.
Under the direction of Chef Amit Bagyal, this is a kitchen operating at the level where technique becomes invisible and only the experience remains the mark, as any serious diner knows, of the genuinely exceptional.
The £125 Chef Tasting Menu is a study in restraint and audacity in equal measure. It opens with an amuse bouche that sets the register immediately: pani puri with carrot kanji and pickled pineapple; watermelon with guntur chili sambal and petit herbs; artichoke shawarma on a crispy saj. Three bites. Flawless calibration. The kitchen is telling you, with great composure, that it knows precisely where it is going.
What follows is cooking of rare intelligence. Ghewar chaat that honeyed Rajasthani lattice arrives reimagined with avocado, strawberry, pomelo and yogurt ice cream, a dish that walks the line between memory and invention without ever losing its footing. The non-vegetarian menu offers prawns with asparagus, zeera aloo espuma and tomato rasam South India’s most elegant broth, made here with the precision of a kitchen that understands that restraint is its own luxury. Then crab with ghee roast masala, dal vada waffle and curry leaf honey: bold, assured, completely certain of itself.
The vegetarian menu is no afterthought. Jackfruit, cauliflower varuval, asparagus and water chestnut each course a genuine equal to its non-vegetarian counterpart. Both menus share their spine: tortellini filled with gorgonzola dolce in smoked makhani with chili jam a moment of cross-cultural fluency that only the most confident kitchens can pull off and the Khichdi of India, which arrives near the close of the savoury courses as both comfort and statement. Rice and lentils, ancient and elemental, presented here with the quiet authority of a chef who needs no permission to celebrate what is his.
Dessert is ‘Pandan Payesh’: vanilla yogurt, sour milk ice cream, milk crisp. Bengali in soul, global in language. A coffee stone closes proceedings with characteristic elegance.
The room is intimate, warmly lit, deliberately unhurried. The kind of space that asks nothing of you except that you pay attention. Trèsind Mayfair is not a restaurant making a case for Indian fine dining. It is a restaurant that has already won it.
