On May 22, 2025, the Michelin Guide Dubai announced that Trèsind Studio had become the first Indian restaurant anywhere in the world to earn three Michelin stars. Twenty seats. A chef from Delhi who trained under Manish Mehrotra. A tasting menu built on the full breadth of Indian cuisine — not the simplified version the world usually receives. History was made on the Palm Jumeirah.
The Historic Announcement
One star in 2022. Two in 2023. Three in 2025. The fastest rise in Indian culinary history.
The Michelin Guide entered Dubai in 2022, and Trèsind Studio received its first star in that inaugural edition. The second arrived in 2023. The third — the one that made history — was announced on May 22, 2025, at a ceremony in Downtown Dubai, making Trèsind Studio the first Indian restaurant in the world to hold the highest distinction in global gastronomy. The Michelin Guide described it as exceptional cuisine worth a special journey. The Indian culinary community described it as long overdue.
The restaurant had simultaneously reached number eleven on the World's 50 Best Restaurants 2024 list. It holds the Art of Hospitality Award from the inaugural Middle East and North Africa's 50 Best Restaurants ceremony in 2022. In four years of Michelin coverage, it climbed from zero to three stars — a trajectory that no other Indian restaurant, in any city, in any Michelin Guide, has ever matched.
Gwendal Poullennec, the International Director of the Michelin Guide, described the achievement precisely: Trèsind Studio's historic three stars demonstrate that Dubai embraces a rich tapestry of flavours that reflect the world's gastronomic passions. What the recognition represents more broadly — for the credibility of Indian cuisine in global fine dining, for chefs working in the tradition around the world, for the argument that Indian gastronomy is not a secondary category but a primary one — is harder to calculate and more important.
The Chef & His Vision
A Delhi-trained cook who chose Dubai to show the world what Indian food is.
Himanshu Saini grew up in India and trained at the Banarsidas Chandiwala Institute of Hotel Management in Okhla, New Delhi. The formative years of his career were spent under Chef Manish Mehrotra at Indian Accent in Delhi — the restaurant that had already begun to demonstrate, for an Indian audience, what modern Indian fine dining could look like when classical technique was applied to the full breadth of the country's culinary tradition. From Mehrotra, Saini absorbed the discipline, the creative edge, and the fundamental conviction that Indian cuisine deserved to be taken as seriously as any other on earth.
His route to Dubai was circuitous: a period considering New York, a decision against it, then a flight to the UAE in 2014 to open Trèsind — a modern Indian fine dining restaurant that found an audience in a city where every nationality passes through and where serious food is taken seriously. The name Trèsind is a play on the French phrase très indien — very Indian. In 2018, he opened Trèsind Studio as a concentrated, more experimental version of the parent restaurant: twenty guests per seating, a tasting menu that changes with the seasons and stories he wants to tell, a philosophy that is as much about India's regional diversity as it is about any single dish.
My agenda is to make people understand what Indian food is. In India, there are about 19,600 dialects and over 121 spoken languages. In every state, the language, food, and culture change — each has its own recipe to the same dish. We're talking about different cuisines of different people, yet they all form Indian gastronomy.
HIMANSHU SAINI
The name of the restaurant's dining philosophy — Atithi Devo Bhava — is a Sanskrit phrase meaning "the guest is God." It is not marketing copy. It describes a specific orientation of hospitality that runs through every element of the Trèsind Studio experience: the personalised welcome, the attentiveness of the service team, the decision to seat only twenty guests at a time precisely because fewer people means more care for each one. The restaurant received the Art of Hospitality Award from 50 Best in 2022. The recognition was earned.
Saini's own taste is emphatically regional. He advocates most strongly for South Indian and coastal cuisines — Goa, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka — which he argues are under-represented in how Indian food is understood internationally. His signature dish, Sadya, is an interpretation of the traditional Keralean feast, assembled into a single plate. His advocacy for the Northeast, for the distinct cuisines of tribal communities, for the food that does not travel easily and therefore never reached a global audience, is what gives the menu its intellectual seriousness alongside its sensory pleasure.
The Tasting Menu & Its Signatures
India's full story, twenty courses at a time, told with precision and emotion.
Sadya
Saini's interpretation of the traditional Keralean feast — multiple dishes that would normally arrive on a banana leaf in sequential courses, assembled into a single plate. A demonstration of what happens when a humble communal tradition is treated with the same seriousness as any haute cuisine composition.
Khichdi of India
A humble household staple — rice and lentils, comfort food from every Indian home — transformed into a celebration of regional diversity, plated with precision and layered storytelling. One of the restaurant's most discussed dishes: proof that the simplest ingredients contain the most history.
Murabba Variation
An interpretation of the traditional Indian fruit preserve — apples paired with date and whey mole. A contemporary tribute that connects a centuries-old preservation technique to modern plating sensibility without losing what made the original meaningful.
Tomato Tikka Masala, Naan Soufflé
A refined reinterpretation of India's comfort classic — the dish everyone outside India thinks is Indian — with black lentil brodo. The naan soufflé: a technical demonstration that classic Indian bread can be elevated without being made unrecognisable. Familiar and entirely new simultaneously.
Pickled Pepper, Tangerine Flowers, Khandvi Ice Cream
A course that exemplifies the Trèsind Studio sensibility: bold, floral, nostalgic flavours from the Gujarat tradition — khandvi is a Gujarati snack — reimagined into a form that preserves the emotional memory while transforming the physical experience. Playful and technically serious at once.
The Papadom Cocktail Programme
The bar program designed by Dom Carella, a critically acclaimed Italian mixologist, uses previously unused kitchen byproducts to create beverages that work in synergy with the food. Spirit-based and non-spirit-based options. The non-alcoholic program is as considered as the wine list — a rare achievement.
Before You Go
Everything practical, plainly told
- Address: R002, East Wing Rooftop, Nakheel Mall, Palm Jumeirah, Dubai, UAE (St. Regis Gardens, The Palm Jumeirah)
- Phone: +971 58 895 1272
- Website: tresindstudio.com
- Hours: Dinner only. One sitting per evening. Check tresindstudio.com for current service days and times — the restaurant operates a limited schedule to maintain the quality and attention that twenty-guest sittings require.
- Getting There: Palm Jumeirah is accessible from central Dubai by taxi (15–25 minutes from Downtown Dubai, depending on traffic) or by the Palm Monorail from the Atlantis Gateway station. Nakheel Mall has its own parking. Given the evening-only service, a taxi or rideshare is the most practical option.
- Bookings: Via tresindstudio.com or by phone. Book as far in advance as possible — twenty seats means any sitting is quickly subscribed. The restaurant's ten-year anniversary in 2028 and its historic three-star status make tables harder to secure than ever. Cancellation policies apply; check the website.
- Price: The tasting menu is approximately AED 1,200–1,800 per couple (roughly USD 136–245 per person) for food, depending on the menu option. Beverage pairings — alcoholic and non-alcoholic — are additional. This is a premium price point that reflects the intimacy, the quality, and the historic significance of the experience.
- Vegetarian: Trèsind Studio offers a 60% vegetarian menu option and a fully vegetarian menu as standard. This is not a compromise — the vegetarian version of the meal is as ambitious and as considered as the full menu, reflecting the breadth of Indian culinary tradition where vegetarian cooking has never been a secondary category.
- The Garden: The restaurant maintains an on-site urban garden that grows fresh herbs and seasonal produce used in the kitchen. A specific and unusual commitment for a rooftop restaurant in the UAE — worth noticing when dishes arrive with herbs from a few metres away.
Things Worth Knowing
Before you sit down at one of twenty seats
- Come with curiosity about the full breadth of Indian cuisine — Trèsind Studio is not North Indian restaurant food elevated. It is an argument about the entire subcontinent — coastal, southern, northeastern, tribal, regional — and the case that Indian gastronomy is as diverse and as sophisticated as any culinary tradition on earth. The meal rewards guests who understand or want to understand this distinction.
- Consider the vegetarian menu seriously — India's vegetarian culinary tradition is not a restriction — it is one of the most developed bodies of cooking in the world. Saini's commitment to the vegetarian menu means it is as inventive and as pleasurable as the full menu. If your table is mixed, consider taking different menus and comparing.
- The non-alcoholic pairing is genuinely worth ordering — Dom Carella's beverage program, built partly from kitchen byproducts, is one of the most thoughtfully designed non-alcoholic pairings in the world. Unlike many restaurants where the non-alcoholic option is an afterthought, at Trèsind Studio it is as philosophically aligned with the kitchen's values as the wine list.
- The service will be unlike any other three-star experience you've had — The Atithi Devo Bhava philosophy — the guest is God — produces a hospitality style that is warm, engaged and genuinely personal rather than the formal reserve of classic European fine dining. The Art of Hospitality Award from 50 Best is not a surprise to anyone who has eaten here.
- Twenty seats means this is intimate in a way most three-star restaurants are not — The decision to seat only twenty guests per sitting was not an operational constraint — it was a hospitality philosophy. You will be known by name. The team will know your dietary preferences before you arrive. The meal will feel personal in a way that a larger room cannot replicate.
WHy This Restaurant
What Trèsind Studio actually represents
The Michelin Guide has been operating since 1900. In 125 years of awarding three stars — its highest distinction, reserved for restaurants whose cuisine is worth a special journey regardless of where in the world you are coming from — no Indian restaurant anywhere on earth had ever received it. Not in India itself, where the Guide does not operate. Not in London, which has the largest Indian restaurant scene outside the subcontinent. Not in Singapore, New York, or Sydney.
Trèsind Studio, on the rooftop of a mall on an artificial palm-shaped island off the coast of Dubai, broke that record on May 22, 2025. The paradox of the location — this is not where you would design the site of Indian culinary history — is quickly resolved when you understand why Dubai: the city's extraordinary diversity, its global visitor base, its openness to serious food from any tradition, and its willingness to recognise greatness without the cultural gatekeeping that sometimes operates elsewhere made it the right place for Saini to make his argument.
I always believed Indian food could stand proudly on the global stage. Three Michelin stars is the confirmation.
BHUPENDER NATH, FOUNDER OF TRÈSIND STUDIO
The three stars matter because of what they say about Indian cuisine, not just about Trèsind Studio. They are confirmation that the full depth of Indian culinary tradition — its 19,600 dialects of food, its regional diversity that makes it more like a continent's cuisine than a single country's — is as worthy of the world's highest gastronomic recognition as any French, Japanese or Spanish restaurant that has ever held the distinction. Saini said he cried when the second star arrived. The third changed something larger than one restaurant. Go to understand what that something is.