I’ve eaten at both Tresind and Carnival by Tresind. Both kitchens are run by Himanshu Saini – a chef who belongs to a league of creative geniuses whose craft you find impossible to fault. Yes, flavours are always subjective and what agrees with one diner may not agree with another. However, you know the experience hits the sweet spot when you walk out of the restaurant knowing that every dish brought to the table was miles ahead of ‘average’.
When Indian Accent pioneered ‘Modern Indian Cuisine’ almost a decade back, it exploded into a phenomenon where now the space is well saturated with good spin-offs, bad spin-offs and a world in between. Carnival by Tresind is well established as a top tier restaurant in this category. You might ask yourself though, that once the theatrics on a menu have been discovered, what would make you return to the restaurant. I found my answers at the end of my meal.
The menus at Carnival are seasonal. So every four months, you could visit and potentially be discovering new stars on the block. I was delighted to re-acquaint myself with Life Is Too Short, Eat Dessert First – their version of a Jalebi Chaat, Pullinji – Prawns cooked in ginger and tamarind and served with a curry leaf crisp, and Happy Halloween – pumpkin kulchha which had me as gobsmacked as the first time I tried it. The consistency on the dishes that continue on from the previous season isn’t lost at all. In fact, some of them have been improvised! Take for instance the Dal Cappuccino, which the first time around was served with a mini phulka that was so hard to crack that it made for difficult eating, is now served with a soft, crumbly cookie. The joy of eating is enhanced as you dip the cookie into your cappuccino, just as you would dip a Parle G biscuit into garam chai.
Talking to Himanshu about the new flavours of the season, you immediately start to appreciate the intense research and care that has been taken to put up a dish, that has a story to tell and that is the underlying theme of a dining experience at Carnival by Tresind. The dishes at your table will not only woo the palate but will also be the interesting focal point of your over-a-meal conversation.
The Pink Pani-Puri for instance is an ode to breast cancer awareness. The puri gets its colour from beetroot and the pani, served in a test tube, gets its vivid colour from pomegranate. The flavours were spot on. Tangy as I like it, despite the use of pomegranate, which I was worried might have taken the sweetness a tad bit over the edge.
My favourite from that meal though was the Carnival version of Surf and Turf – beef and prawns, cooked on a heated Himalayan salt slab. The ingenuity of cooking on a salt slab at your table is by itself something that wowed me instantly. And then, give me almost anything tossed in chilly, garlic and basil in it and I’m pretty easily sold anyway. Chatting with Himanshu as he prepared our dish made it obvious that this cooking method isn’t half as effortless as he makes it look. On the contrary, it is as temperamental as one would imagine and has taken hours of effort for him to perfect. Figuring out the ideal cooking temperature, the portion of the slab best suited to cooking the meats and playing with it a million times to know how the various factors affect the overall outcome of the dish make it pretty evident of the many reasons the chef gets it right is because of his excitement and almost child-like quest for food. It jumped straight out at me in conversation with him. The dish itself was exciting from start to finish. Was the paav on the plate a necessary addition? We could debate that, though with some more of the salty, garlicky bits on the plate, that argument could have been well resolved! If you’re wondering, food isn’t the only sensory experience at Carnival. The cocktails are just as glamorous as the food. Take for instance this visually stunning cocktail. Who wouldn’t be happy with that at the table?
I’m not much of a dessert person, but it’s hard not to admire the beautifully presented Pineapple Mawa Cake drizzled generously with salted caramel sauce and studded with berries and Little Hearts biscuits. What really got my heart though was the Sesame Seeds and Burnt Sugar Tuiles so evocative of the ‘tilkut’ I have grown up on! Just sweet enough with a hint of almost burnt bitter. I had resolutions of eating just one but then, ‘eating rules’ are best left at home when you’re dining at Carnival by Tresind.
Whether the dishes were ones that I’d already eaten or whether it was the new items on the menu, the food at Carnival still has this inimitable quality of making you feel eager and animated about it, a little bit like a kid in a candy store. It’s no surprise that this curious enjoyment trickles down from the man at the helm of the kitchen. It is his own stay hungry stay foolish attitude that makes Carnival by Tresind stand head over shoulders above most places that call themselves Modern Indian Dining venues.
Ratings out of 5
Food: 4 | Ambiance: 4.5 | Service: 4 | Overall: 4
Meal for Two without Alcohol: Dhs 400 Inclusive of taxes | Alcohol: Yes | Credit Card: Yes|
Timing Lunch 12-3.30 pm; Dinner: 06.30 – 10.45 pm| Wheelchair Access: Yes
Address: Unit P5-03/01, Level POD, Burj Daman, Dubai International Financial Centre, P.O.box – 27385, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Telephone: +971522424262 / + 97144218665
Disclaimer: This review was done on an invitation from the restaurant. Due judgement and care has been applied by the author to remain objective and unbiased in the review, but readers need to consider this review keeping this fact in mind
