Best Indian Restaurants Outside India 2026

The first Indian restaurant in the world to earn three Michelin stars. The 20 seats are the most consequential in Dubai.

Twenty seats, an open kitchen, and a tasting menu that maps the subcontinent from the Thar Desert to the Himalayan foothills to the Malabar Coast. Trèsind Studio arrived in the Nakheel Mall rooftop on the Palm Jumeirah in 2022 and announced itself immediately as something categorically different. The room is intimate to the point of theatre: you are watching chef Himanshu Saini's brigade work through every pass.

The India Rising menu runs to multiple courses, each representing a distinct regional cuisine. The Deccan Plateau section delivers a smoked aubergine with tamarind and sesame that reconfigures everything you thought you knew about bhartha. The coastal Malabar sequence includes a cured kingfish with coconut toddy vinegar that is technically precise and deeply specific in the way only a chef who has researched the source material can produce. Wine pairing is available; the non-alcoholic pairing — house-fermented shrubs and regional botanical infusions — is more interesting.

For clients with serious credentials in food or travel, this is the table that signals you know what you are doing. Dubai has more celebrated restaurants; none are as singular as this. Ranked #11 in the World's 50 Best Restaurants 2024. Chef Saini placed third in The Best Chef Awards 2025 in Milan.

Two Michelin stars in Mayfair — the first London Indian restaurant to hold them, and the hardest table to get in the neighbourhood.

Gymkhana on Albemarle Street occupies two floors of a converted building that evokes the colonial members' clubs of the subcontinent — dark lacquered wood, ceiling fans, hunting trophies, leather seating. The aesthetic is deliberate and considered rather than nostalgic. The room has a specific authority; conversations feel important here. Chef Director Sid Ahuja inherited a kitchen that had already earned two stars, and has maintained them with a menu that walks between tradition and precision.

The kid goat methi keema with salli and fried egg is a study in how to render street food with kitchen rigour. The wild muntjac biryani — served in a sealed pot, opened at the table — is the most-ordered dish in the building for good reason. The five-course tasting menu at £110 is the most efficient route through the kitchen's range; the wine pairing at £95 additional is surprisingly good at this price point.

Among restaurants built to impress clients in London, Gymkhana carries particular weight because it demonstrates taste rather than simply expense. Anyone can book a classic French room; booking this specific table shows cultural intelligence.

Tamil Nadu cooking at Michelin-star level — the most unapologetically regional Indian restaurant in America, and the most exciting.

Chef Vijay Kumar grew up in Tamil Nadu and cooked in Singapore and London before arriving in New York. Semma on Greenwich Avenue does not translate his background into something more accessible to Western palates. The gunpowder dosa arrives crackling and heavy with a fifty-ingredient sambar; the nathai pirattal — snail curry — is precisely what it says. The room is dark-toned and energetic: exposed brick, wooden floors, a bar running the length of one wall.

Kumar won the 2025 James Beard Award for Best Chef: New York State, confirming what the Michelin star (awarded 2022 and retained) had already indicated. The kudal varuval — spiced goat intestines — has become a signature not because it is provocative but because it is excellent. The dosa sampler remains the best entry point to the menu's range.

For a first date in New York, Semma is ideal for two people with adventurous palates: the dishes are shareable, the portions are generous, and the food gives you something to talk about across every course. Reservations open on Resy two to three weeks in advance; Friday and Saturday evenings fill within hours.

The world's first Michelin-starred all-vegetarian Indian restaurant. No onion. No garlic. Nothing wasted.

Avatāra in Dubai Hills is one of the most conceptually bold restaurants in the world: a 16-to-18-course vegetarian tasting menu built on Ayurvedic principles, prepared without onion or garlic, in a city that built its dining reputation on grilled protein. The room is sculptural — dark stone, low lighting, a sense of ceremony around each arrival. Chef Rahul Rana runs the kitchen; chef Omkar, who won the Michelin Young Chef Award in 2023 at age 29, defines the creative direction.

Standout courses include a raw beet sequence with citrus and tamarind that is startling in its brightness, and a black lentil preparation — slow-cooked for hours — that achieves a depth usually reserved for braised meat. The menu accommodates vegan and gluten-free diners without compromise. Everything on the plate has a reason to be there.

For clients with vegetarian requirements who expect the same standard as their omnivorous colleagues, Avatāra is the most important booking in Dubai. It removes any compromise from the equation and replaces it with ambition.

Mount Street's palatial Indian — one Michelin star, silk-smooth service, and a tasting menu that covers the whole subcontinent in ten courses.

Jamavar on Mount Street is the London flagship of a small group with roots in India's Leela Palaces. Executive Chef Surender Mohan runs a kitchen built on refined pan-Indian cooking: the spice vocabulary is broad, the execution precise, and the room — dark woods, brass accents, silk cushions — delivers the palatial experience the name implies. The tasting menu at £105 (wine pairing £90 additional) is the most complete expression of the kitchen's range.

The Chettinad pepper crab is the dish that turns first-timers into regulars; the stone bass in green coconut masala demonstrates that the kitchen is thinking carefully about sauce structure, not just flavour loading. Service is impeccably paced — sommelier guidance is among the best in Mayfair at this price tier.

Jamavar's location on Mount Street, surrounded by luxury boutiques and private members' clubs, makes it the natural choice for business dinners in London where the environment needs to signal success without a word being spoken.

Britain's oldest Indian restaurant holds a Michelin star after a century. The longevity is not the story — the cooking is.

Opened in 1926 by Edward Palmer, Veeraswamy on Regent Street has been serving classical Indian cooking for a century — and earning a Michelin star since 2016 confirms it has not been coasting on heritage. Chef Uday Salunkhe runs a kitchen that spans the subcontinent: Chettinad chicken, Goan fish curry, royal Mughal biryanis. The room, high above Regent Street, has been refurbished without losing the warmth of something that has clearly been loved for a long time.

The set lunch menu at £48 is one of the best-value Michelin-starred lunches in London. The masala lobster is the kitchen's showpiece dish: a whole tail in a Keralan spice reduction that arrives with the confidence of a kitchen that has been doing this longer than most of its competitors have been alive.

For team dinners in London where the group is large and the brief is impressive-but-accessible, Veeraswamy offers a private dining room and menus that accommodate the full range of dietary needs across a party.

London's first Michelin-starred Punjabi restaurant — maximalist, celebratory, and louder than anything else in Mayfair.

The JKS Restaurant Group — the family behind Gymkhana and Trishna — opened Ambassadors Clubhouse in Mayfair to celebrate North Indian festive culture: the design references the grand party mansions of the Punjab, two floors of brass fixtures, bold colour, and a sound system that makes it immediately clear this is not a place for quiet conversations. A Michelin star followed in the 2026 guide, making it the first Punjabi restaurant in the UK to hold one.

Chef Karan Mittal's menu centres on Punjabi celebration food executed with the technical discipline of JKS kitchens: the dal makhani is slow-cooked for 48 hours and arrives as a near-perfect reduction; the tandoor-roasted whole chicken with fenugreek butter is the kind of dish that photographs and tastes in equal measure. The cocktail programme draws on Indian botanical ingredients — the cardamom and rose Old Fashioned is the best-seller for good reason.

For birthday dinners requiring a room with genuine energy, or for a first date in London with someone who responds to atmosphere over quietude, Ambassadors Clubhouse is the most alive Indian restaurant in the city.