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 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?

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 5Food: 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
