Matt Preston's mission to find the best biryani in Hyderabad, India

Passionate foodie Matt Preston has been on a quest to find the best biryani in Hyderabad since the 1990s - and competition is hot for the benchmark of the local flagship dish.

I love Hyderabad. Its storied history (in part as a global centre of pearl, diamond and emerald trade) and its progressive present (built on embracing the IT revolution and trying to find solutions to every Indian city’s problems) make it a fascinating visit, plus it’s home to one of India’s greatest dishes, the biryani.

I first went to Hyderabad in search of the perfect biryani back in the ’90s. I tracked down and interviewed a chef famous for cooking wedding biryanis for thousands of guests – huge-bellied clay-pots of rice, spice and meat sealed with dough and cooked slowly in ground-ovens as dum biryani.

Then there was Begum Mumtaz Khan, who grew up as a Muslim aristocrat. She taught me, as she has generations of young cooks, that Hyderabadi biryani is unique: “It’s the only place where they make it with raw meat,” she told me.

The fascinating thing about biryani is there’s so little to it and thus nowhere to hide. And the perfect cooking of that meat hidden under the steaming rice is an art form in itself. The best biryani cooks manage to wring more flavour and fragrance out of largely the same ingredients. It’s culinary magic.

One myth says biryani was originally a dish served to workers at a large building site, but it smelt so good the ruler insisted it be served in the palace. However, it most likely came with the Muslim royals from Persia, who once ruled Hyderabad.

Hyderabad is also known for its history and culture - but for foodies, it's all about the biryani.

Parochial food fans in Chennai or Lucknow say their biryani (fragrant with rosewater, saffron or cardamom) is better. The steamed potato in the Bengali version – a penny-pinching measure some Hyderabadis sneer at – has me intrigued. On a trip to Dhaka in Bangladesh I messily ate local biryani (Dhaka bhaiya biryani) with my hands and loved the potato so much I vowed to open a biryani shop one day where every pot featured double potato, which drew local approval. They’re still waiting.

While my son and his friends were in Mumbai on a uni internship last year, they eked out their stipend by ordering biryani online most nights for $2 a serve. That’s the thing about the dish – at its most basic it’s a plate of cheap rice with meat and spices, yet even that is pretty satisfying. At its best, though, it must be made in bulk. That’s why it’s so great for restaurants and those huge Indian weddings.

Hyderabad is famous for its unique style of biryani.

On my last trip to Hyderabad I was there to cook a couple of dinners, which gave me access to the passionate opinions on the best places for biryani from local food lovers and chefs of all ranks. The conversations could get heated. After every “I love...” would come a response like, “Are you mad? Only homesick Hyderabadis who have moved away would put that first.”

After a dozen or so conversations like this when names like Nawaab’s, Pista House, Mehfils, Hotel Shadab, Bawarchi, Sarvi, Chicha’s and Café Bahar were regularly bandied about, I made a short list of the most favourably mentioned contenders. We then headed out to try their biryanis over a series of lunches and learnt several rules about the dish.

Hotel Shadab is home to Hyderabad's best biryani.

There was no such thing as a bad biryani at the places we visited. The differences between great biryani, good biryani and just chicken and rice are subtle but you’ll know it when you see, smell and taste it. Certain features are key: the fluffiness of the rice that sometimes tastes warmly of saffron; the fragrance of spices (cardamom, caraway, maybe star anise or mace); the sweet, slight chew of tanned fried onion; warmth – but not too much– from chilli; even a little musky dagad phool (aka black stone flower), a lichen that releases its flavour when cooked in ghee. The tenderness of the meat (usually chicken or mutton) is also crucial but perhaps most important is whether you go back for a second serve.

The drink of choice, according to one of my travelling companions, India’ s Young Chef of the Year in 2022, Aditya Muralishankar, is Thums Up, the local version of cola, and it seems to increase one’s ability to eat that second serve.

We noted all the key features at both Café Bahar (where the rice was especially fluffy) and Hotel Shadab. At lunchtime at the latter ignore the bleak tables downstairs. Your best bet is to push your way up the stairs to the first-floor dining room, hoping the stream of customers coming down is a sign that tables are becoming free. Don’t get your hopes up too much, however – you’ll find crowds packing all the space at the top of the stairs and around the cash registers where the tiny waiting area is.

After a little wait – such is the efficiency of the place – you’ll be beckoned to a table where the rice-strewn tablecloth will be artfully flipped. Before the waiter leaves order a chicken and a mutton biryani and a serve of the marag (mutton stew), which will bring some fresh, meaty slurpiness to your meal. And three Thums Up. The biryanis cost about $5.50 a (big) serve; a little more if you want the meat boneless.

The waiter fishes out chunks of meat from the mound of rice he arrived with. They’re piled on your plate and reburied under wonderfully perfumed rice. It makes you understand why the perfectly cooked, juicy meat is so important. After seven days of saucy curries the absence of gravy is startling.

These were the biryani I liked best – especially the mutton. It delivered on all fronts. Thus I suggest that Hotel Shadab is the perfect start for a benchmark if you want to begin your own biryani quest.

One final thing: keep a couple of hours free after lunch. One of the few things even better than a great biryani is the “biryani nap” after it.

Originally published as Matt Preston's mission to find the best biryani in Hyderabad, India