Trèsind, London: ‘It lit up my senses like nothing I’d experienced’

Some restaurants launch; others arrive. Trèsind has arrived. Himanshu Saini, who has chosen Mayfair for his first opening outside Asia, is the first chef to win three Michelin stars with Indian cuisine. He launched Trèsind in Dubai in 2014. Along with Mayfair, there’s also one in Mumbai, the three-starred Trèsind Studio on the Palm Jumeirah and two more chains under the Trèsind umbrella across India and the United Arab Emirates. This may be your first time seeing the brand name (which combines the French for “very” with an abbreviation for “Indian”, by the way), but it won’t be the last.

Unbeknownst to its neighbours, Trèsind’s arrival could be seismic for the Mayfair microeconomy. This area, full of rich men with high spice thresholds, perfected the recipe for the tasteful, elevated curry house with Benares, Tamarind and Jamavar. Then the all-conquering Sethi siblings of JKS Restaurants set new levels of adulation with Gymkhana, BiBi and Ambassadors Clubhouse, in the “bankers’ curry mile”. For 30 years, these six restaurants have taken in millions of pounds and hosted hundreds of high-powered meetings, and have even been among our nation’s few global exports. We may not produce cars or coal any more, but we put Gymkhana in Vegas.

If I were a Sethi, I would be worried about Trèsind; I too was worried when I came for dinner. They’d been open for a week – I was factoring in an acceptable level of missteps, ready to overlook teething troubles. The deposit was a little grating: £125 each, paid upfront then taken from the bill. My wife and I arrived half a monkey down, in a mood to probe and nitpick. Then the door swooshed closed behind us, and if my memory serves me right we entered some kind of mahogany dreamscape, lungs warm with woody spice and camphor, as Caribou’s Can’t Do Without You vworp-vworped from the wall-speakers. I’d place our moment of departure from the surly bonds of reality at bite number one: a popping-candy pani puri full of pickled pineapple (repeat five times), topped by an explosive sphere of carrot and mustard kombucha. For a stuffed cracker the size of a cupped thumb and forefinger, it lit up my senses like nothing I’d ever experienced, gastronomic or otherwise.

That said, I’d been conned by opening bites before. It’s a theory my friend Joe advances: that if a chef spends too much time on the first amuse-bouche, it shows they don’t grasp what makes a meal great – pacing, peaks and troughs, simply holding back some razzmatazz for later. My reservations couldn’t survive the second canapé, a tartlet of baked and sambal-cured watermelon; nor the mushroom chai, poured at the table, woozy with Kashmiri morels and powdered truffle. By the time we reached the genre-bending chickpea and strawberry chaat with yoghurt ice-cream I was texting Joe, and others, with manic zeal.

Six servings in, our veg and non-veg menus diverged for the first time. My wife got asparagus and water chestnuts with a cumin-potato foam and a puckering tomato rasam, a south Indian soup. In the chestnuts’ place, I got poached prawns, snappable and sweet – an illicit thrill for me in the context of Indian food, having grown up around men who’d warn me with pleading eyes against ever ordering prawn curries. To follow, a fiery puck of crab masala with a lentil waffle and a drizzle of curry leaf honey. A crab course needs to avoid only one thing: shell. Thankfully, this one did.

Astoundingly, we were still on the upswing of the meal. The next course made a fool out of me – someone who rolls their eyes every time someone mentions Proust and his madeleine. This was tortellini, stuffed with gorgonzola dolce, on a bed of smoked butter chicken and a smear of chilli jam: two pieces, a couple of spoonfuls. I’ll be damned if I wasn’t somewhere else for a second, reliving a memory I didn’t know I had been holding on to. Clearly I have some subconscious bond with the taste of my first tikka masala.

Then came the regal heights and peasant depths of Indian cuisine, delivered over two courses. A rich lamb chop draped in a vindaloo veil, with chimichurri chutney and a spongy idli cake for sauce-dredging. Heaven. Finally, the didactic showpiece at the heart of Trèsind’s approach to cuisine: the khichdi of India, in which 21 items are mixed, trolleyside, into a humble dal-and-rice porridge. Everything, from Maharashtran garlic chutney to Kashmiri saffron and Keralan pink peppercorn is stirred through. The end result was soothing but mind-bendingly complex, like eating the Bhagavad Gita by the spoonful.

After the technicolour riot of the savoury courses, we were given dessert in monochrome. It was listed on the menu as vanilla, yoghurt and milk, but it might as well have said “seraphim and Xanax” – snow-white bliss. To say goodbye, Trèsind then send you home with their take on an after-dinner coffee: a dark-chocolate ovoid with, inevitably, a shot of espresso that rushes forth as soon as the shell is breached. You’ll be encouraged by one of their well-drilled waiters to do it in one bite, and you should listen – though if you don’t, they’ll be standing by with a napkin.

The bill came to a lot, our deposit scratching off just under half the final damage, accounting for wine pairing and a 15% service charge, which I feel duty-bound to mention. But if you have any interest at all in going, act now, as it won’t get any cheaper once the Michelin inspectors visit. This extraordinary restaurant puts the title “London’s best Indian” laughably out of reach for the foreseeable future. Trèsind has arrived. What’s Gymkhana going to do about it?

Trèsind, 13-14 Hanover Street, London W1S 1YH (tresind.co.uk). Tasting menu only from £125. Alcohol from £18 a glass