If you’re not Indian, chances are you’ve never heard of khichdi. Cheap and fortifying, the rice-and-lentil dish is a home-cooking staple across the subcontinent, but it’s rarely eaten outside the home. Khichdi fascinates chef Himanshu Saini because of its near-infinite variations.
“Every household in India has its own recipe. It’s a dish that expresses India and its culinary diversity. It has no boundaries. It doesn’t even really have a recipe.”
His take on khichdi — which means a ‘mixture of many things’ — is as much a manifesto as it is a restaurant dish, conceived to highlight the subcontinent’s often underappreciated culinary range. A 3D map of India is brought to the table with 20 ingredients laid out geographically according to their state of origin.
The server then ‘travels’ across the map, adding these regional elements into a central bowl of hot, tempered dal and rice, explaining the significance of each: saffron from Kashmir, ghee from Haryana, curry leaves from Tamil Nadu, green chillies from Andhra Pradesh, and so on. After the complex ritual of mixing the 20 ingredients, the khichdi is served on a humble wooden plate.
India on a plate
This brilliant, career-defining dish is now available in London (albeit in a slightly different format), as Saini’s Dubai-born Trèsind brand - and by extension his employer Passion F&B - both make their debuts outside the Middle East and the subcontinent.
On Mayfair’s Hanover Street, the restaurant marks an exciting moment for high-end Indian cuisine in the capital. Last year, Saini’s Dubai flagship Trèsind Studio made history by becoming the first Indian restaurant to be awarded three Michelin stars. And it did it quickly.
Thomas Keller holds the record for the fastest progression from one to three Michelin stars - achieved in three consecutive years - although he had already secured three stars for The French Laundry. Saini reached the same milestone in four years, despite being little more than a flicker on Michelin’s radar beforehand, making the achievement all the more impressive. He was also just 38 years old.
Suffice to say, he’s a big deal. But he’s not bringing Trèsind Studio to the capital. Passion F&B has chosen instead to bring its debut restaurant brand Trèsind to the UK, which launched in Dubai in 2014 and later gave rise to the more high-reaching Trèsind Studio. In case you were wondering, Trèsind is a blend of the French word très (meaning ‘very’) and Ind (short for Indian) and therefore translates to ‘very Indian’. Saini is chef owner at the 15-seat Trèsind Studio but also finds time to oversee food across the group as corporate chef.
Confusingly, Trèsind is a brand that has been designed to morph to fit into whatever market it finds itself in. Its Dubai restaurant offers a mix of traditional and progressive Indian cuisine while its Mumbai outpost is a more ambitious, tasting menu-only affair.
Trèsind Mayfair looks set to be the brand’s most upscale iteration yet, with Passion F&B’s CEO for the UK and US Suyash Nath - the son of the group’s co-founder Bhupender Nath - quietly telling me that he hopes it will become the first Trèsind to hold a Michelin star.
The sharp end of Indian fine dining
The restaurant will be tasting menu-only in the evening. At lunch, Trèsind Mayfair will offer the same tasting menu alongside a more affordable lunch menu (the restaurant is evenings-only for the moment as it beds in). Nath says this approach reflects the fact that London has one of the most developed markets for Indian fine dining in the world with a total of seven Michelin stars.
“The tasting menu we offer here is the most high-end and imaginative we have ever served at Trèsind. We want to offer something completely different to what is available at other London restaurants.”
To this end, the seven-course plus snacks tasting menu will offer a mix of tried-and-tested dishes from Trèsind Studio - like Khichdi of India - more progressive dishes from Trèsind and some dishes developed especially for the London market.
Nath is not wrong. Trèsind Mayfair is offering something distinct from the current Michelin Indian scene. The only restaurant it brings to mind is the sadly now closed Indian Accent, a New Delhi-born progressive fine dining restaurant which launched an outpost in Mayfair in 2017 that sadly closed a few years later due to the pandemic.
Saini is a protégé of Indian Accent’s founding chef Manish Mehrotra and has a comparable philosophy, although he has more international experience than his mentor with stints in world-class restaurants all over the world. International influences and ingredients are embraced, but the end result is always recognisably Indian in terms of its composition and flavours.
A dish that neatly sums up this approach on Trèsind Mayfair’s launch menu is tortellini stuffed with gorgonzola served with smoked chicken makhani and chilli jam. The dish sounds incongruous - a bit silly, even - but eats well, with the pasta fulfilling the same role as bread, which would be the traditional accompaniment to a sauce.
Other dishes on the launch menu include a dish of prawn and asparagus with an espuma made with potato and cumin that’s eaten in tandem with a glass of tomato rasam; a salad of avocado, strawberry and pomelo with yogurt ice cream and the spices associated with chaat; and crab dressed with ghee-roasted masala served with a waffle inspired by the popular south Indian street food dish dal vada.
“The story of Indian food is one of constant evolution. Chillies are a relatively new thing in Indian cuisine having come over from America but have now been adapted into the cuisine. For this reason, I don’t limit myself to Indian ingredients,” says Saini, who largely avoids fancy kit and processes.
“My food isn’t technique driven, although like all progressive Indian restaurants we embrace European technique as well as Indian technique. But fundamentally my food is flavour driven, because Indian food should always be flavour driven.”
More than hot and spicy
This policy doesn’t mean that all the dishes at Trèsind are very spicy, with the tasting menu moving in waves from intense yet controlled hits of spice to dishes that are more subtle in terms of both chilli heat and the use of spices. While the pair - who are both originally from India - have a lot of nice things to say about London’s Indian food scene, they do also believe that the UK’s curry house culture has created some misconceptions about spice levels.
“Indian food is so much more than hot and spicy,” Saini says. “It has been a little bastardised in that sense. In most parts of India food is rarely very spicy. Chillies are usually served on the side so people can spice the dish according to their own preference.”
Nath says that Trèsind Mayfair is looking to break the myth that Indian food is always spicy and rich and therefore not suitable for a date, or even lunch.
“That balance and elegance is what differentiates us from other Indian fine dining restaurants. Our food is light and pretty and well-suited to being served with good wine. We like to try and push the envelope in terms of what is possible with pairing Indian food with wine.”
Priced at a competitive £125, the tasting menu isn’t a drawn-out affair with most diners expected to finish within about an hour and a half.
Another way that Passion F&B is seeking to make Trèsind Mayfair stand out in a crowded market is through its design and service style. Given that the main restaurant seats under 60 covers, the site is big with an impressive frontage and roomy reception area giving way to different dining zones.
“We noticed that a lot of the top Indian restaurants don’t have much of an entrance. As an experiential restaurant, the first contact we have with the guest is important.”
The high-spec design is not obviously Indian, although all the art works and much of the materials do originate from the subcontinent. The space is dimly lit and far more vibe-y than UK restaurants with Michelin aspirations tend to be - think Hakkasan by way of Hyderabad. Downstairs is a large bar area that will launch within the next month or so and may be sub branded at some point. The cocktail programme is akin to Khichdi of India in that it highlights famous ingredients from all over the country.
The rise of Indian cuisine
Trèsind’s Mayfair’s debut arrives at a turning point for upscale Indian dining. The sector is rapidly going global: JKS Restaurants has already made its mark in the US with Gymkhana Las Vegas and Ambassadors Clubhouse New York, and Dishoom is crossing the Atlantic, bolstered by an investment from LVMH-linked private equity house L Catterton in a deal that values the beloved Irani café concept at £300m because of its potential to become a worldwide institution.
As Nath’s job title strongly hints, Passion F&B is also looking to cross The Pond and is understood to be closing in on a site in the US. It will most likely be a Trèsind, but the now 13-strong group has plenty of other brands to play with including vegetarian Indian fine dining concept Avatara; the more playful Carnival by Trèsind; and contemporary curry house concept Maison De Curry.
The group is also looking to open more restaurants in the UK and Europe. “We’re seeing other sites in London at the moment and also Manchester,” Nath says. “We think Carnival by Trèsind would be a good fit here as would Avatara, which was the first vegetarian Indian restaurant in the world to win a Michelin star.”
That said, Saini is adamant there will only ever be one Trèsind Studio. “That will never leave Dubai. It is now and will always be a one off.”
In fact, Saini views the rise of progressive Indian dining in hubs like London, Dubai and now New York as a global boom akin to the Spanish avant-garde movement of the early late 1990s and 2000s, welcoming fellow chefs as collaborators rather than rivals in elevating the cuisine’s world status.
So convinced is he of this that his debut cookbook - which is being released by Phaidon tomorrow (6 May) - is titled The Rise of Indian Cuisine. The recipe for Khichdi of India is relatively straightforward, but good luck sourcing the Uttarakhand wild mustard.