Hyderabadi Biryani

I had great hopes on Hyderabad and its cuisines most notably the Biryani. Wherever in India you may happen to reside, you can never be too far away from the Biryani. Be it an upmarket mall in NCR, or the Khomcha dishing out street food in Rampur – Biryani always sells like Hotdogs.

I had tasted Biryani numerous times at many non-descript restaurants/food stalls. So while moving to Hyderabad one of the foremost thoughts in my mind had been to feast myself to the quintessential “Hyderabadi” Biryani. The one that symbolizes Hyderabad in many ways as in this song from the movie “The Angrez”.

And with such great hopes in my heart and hunger in my belly that I set out for Hyderabad House – a place that prides itself on being the harbinger of Hyderabadi food. After a while arrived my Veg-Biryani dressed on a tray with hot steam piping out. This really got my juices flowing – quite literally! Without wasting any more seconds I broke into it.

First few morsels were taken quite liberally but then it started sinking in – it wasn’t too great. In fact it came down to swallowing the stuff and a couple of minutes later even that looked distant. Thanks to the buttermilk I could gulp some more. Too bad – there were no vegetables to save the day.

Not to blame the restaurant, the rice was of good quality and there were lots of spices in it. With every morsel I took I said to myself,”Oh, they put caradamom in it and there’s elaichi too and tejpatta and God forbid what not!”. But in the end it was plain colored rice – that’s what it was.

As I glanced away I saw a man biting into something that looked like a non-veg Biryani. And man was he really enjoying it ! You can tell when someone is really enjoying his meal, you know what I mean. He might have been very hungry or something but he looked lost into it – just like me but for entirely different reasons altogether. Two men looked out of the window one looked at the sky and other at the mud – is something how it`goes like.

May be my being a vegetarian took the kick out of it but whatever if can’t enjoy it there must be something wrong. The feeling was as if you had come to watch a movie by virtue of it having received great reviews but you felt it was entirely crap.

As I walked out, the restaurant owner looked up to me smiling like a Cheshire cat. Unfortunately I had no kind words for the Biryani but I smiled back in recognition anyway in case his faith in humanity might be hurt.