Five to try: Melbourne’s best biryani restaurants

Why have boring old rice when you can have biryani? The subcontinent’s favourite comfort food is going strong across Melbourne. With Eid feasts upon us this weekend, here are our top picks.

Why settle for an regular bowl of rice when you can go biryani.

Why have boring old rice when you can have biryani? Check out these five restaurants across Melbourne who do it better than the rest.

Bhang, Brunswick

Why have boring old rice when you can have biryani? The subcontinent’s favourite comfort food is going strong across Melbourne.With Eid feasts upon us this weekend, here are our top picks.

Brunswick’s Indian street-food stayer is a guaranteed fun time, from its spice-friendly cocktails (hello, burnt orange gin fizz) in the Bollywood poster-decorated bar to its snacking excellence (all hail the yin-yang appeal of fried spinach leaves) and perky thali platters. But we’re here for the biryani, which means two choices: grilled chicken Maryland or a Sri Lankan-style sweet and sour eggplant that nods to its location in the heart of Melbourne’s vegan belt. Both come with classic mint raita and cucumber pickles. The spice dial isn’t too high, but there’s a mango lassi if you want to cool things down.

1/2A Mitchell St, Brunswick

It’s hard to go past Bhang in Brunswick.

Streets of Hyderabad, Murrumbeena

Rock your biryani Southern style at this fabulous joint near Murrumbeena train station, where the traditional Hyderabadi cooking method – dum pukht – translates as low, slow and spicy. Marinated chicken lolling about in multi-layered, ghee-drizzled rice is tender, juicy and soulful (thanks in part to the bone being left in – also, as the menu says without any risk of understatement, the dish contains “many spices”). Make sure to start your meal with pani puri, the crisp potato and chickpea puffs that explode their sweet, tangy liquid filling in the mouth in the most delightful way.

Murrumbeena Village, 480 Neerim Rd, Murrumbeena

Streets of Hyderabad is a fabulous joint near Murrumbeena train station.

Sher Singh, Docklands

Head to this Days of the Raj gaff on a prime Docklands corner spot – all red banquettes, gilt mirrors and tiny table lamps – for a taste of elevated Northern Indian food. Bone-in chicken and goat cooked in the dum style – low and slow – are joined by a less common seafood version using extra-large tiger prawns. Vegetarians might also want to expand their horizons with the paneer 65, which subs in the mild white cheese for the more usual chicken. Cooked with curry leaves and a host of spices, it proves to be a brilliant flavour-sopper.

807 Bourke St, Docklands

Sher Singh for Vic Stellar delicious 5 to try

Taste of Chennai, Kingsbury

Head north to eat Southern Indian at Taste of Chennai. A favourite with the Indian diaspora as well as students from nearby La Trobe University, this bright spot delivers a perfectly spiced, softly aromatic vegetarian biryani as well as going hard with the grunty appeal of Thalappakatti-style mutton biryani. The encyclopaedic menu offers curios such as cheese and corn dosas, and you can chase your order with a mango lassi or some authentically frothy Chennai-style filter coffee.

1/937/941 Plenty Rd, Kingsbury

Taste of Chennai offers an encyclopaedic menu.

The Black Prince, Melbourne CBD

A British Indian pub where you can also watch the AFL in Melbourne? We’ll take it. At The Black Prince on Bourke St you’ll find India’s favourite rice dish going east-west in the form of cheesy biryani arancini (other fun fusion snacks include butter chicken wings and quinoa-coated gunpowder cauliflower poppers). If you’re going for a main course of the real thing, the kitchen delivers a Punjabi style of biryani, doing its thing with either veg, chicken or tender pieces of fall-apart goat cooked in jasmine rice. Whichever way you jump, it will get your synapses tingling.

45 Bourke St, Melbourne

The Black Prince is British Indian pub where you can also watch the AFL and get killer biryani.