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| The Ambur biryani at Star |
Chennai and biryani?
Come Eid and discussions on biryani can’t be far behind can it?
I don’t know about you but I for one didn’t associate Chennai with biryani till recently.
from Hyderabad, Lucknow, Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata fighting for the biryanis in
their city with a vociferous passion that would put the guests on the News Hour to shame.
impassioned plea for the biryanis in his adopted city of Chennai. He said that
people apparently ate biryani even for breakfast in Chennai. This was quite an eye opener for the rest of us on the chat.
Chennai? Who would have thought of it! The primary food association with Chennai, among outsiders, is often unfortunately limited to idli, dosa and vada. Unlike its southern cousin, Hyderabad, Chennai is possibly not a city associated with biryani by many. Correct me if I am wrong.
That was a decade and a half back. I loved eating back then too but didn’t obsess about food the way I do now. So I hadn’t tried to get to know the biryanis of Chennai further in that trip. I don’t even knew where the biryani I had eaten was called for. I ate happily. No questions asked. I was not a food blogger then.
As you probably know, I went to Chennai on a very short trip a few weeks back to get a taste of the city’s food scene. Amit’s spiel made me keen to try out some of the hallowed biryanis of Chennai and see how they compared with the biryanis that I’ve eaten so far in other parts of India.
Exploring the biryanis of Chennai
some of the famous biryani joints of Chennai during the trip. I went to the comparatively newer
branches of some of the iconic biryani joints of Chennai. These were all located at a place called
Velachery which made them easy to cover over a couple of lunches. This was close to the magnificent ITC Grand Chola Hotel in Chennai where I was staying and whose chefs took me around to the local restaurants. Most of their local restaurant picks coincided with the recommendations given to me separately by Amit Patnaik.
Thalappakkatti’s Dindigul Biryani
The restaurant is so named as the founder apparently used to wear Thalapa, a cloth head
gear, to hide his baldness.
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| The Thalappakkati story on their menu card |
They have quite an extensive menu here
but the biryani is what makes the restaurant famous. The rice used is short grained,
unlike the basmati used in biryanis in the north of India as well as in Hyderabad. This rice is called seeraga samba rice thanks to its
resemblance to whole cumin (jeera). The rice in the Thalakkapatti biryani looked sticky but when I took my first bite, I discovered that each grain of rice was separate from each other.
The goat meat (mutton) in the biryani is shredded into small bits and interspersed through the rice. Not the chunks of mutton on the bone that one is used to in most other biryanis. The rice in the Dindigul biryani takes on the flavour of the meat. The aftertaste has a strong pepper heat
which can make you jump up from your seat if your spice tolerance levels, like mine, are low.
You have the biryani at Thalakkapatti with dalcha, a gravy made with mutton and vegetables, and a raita.
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| The Thalappakatti Biryani |
The restaurant is air-conditioned. The staff friendly and competent and there were people who could speak to us in Hindi.
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| It’s biryani on every table at Thalakkappati and you use your hands to eat it |
Ambur biryani at Star
Ambur biryani.
for its Ambur biryani, at Chennai’s Velachery suburb.
It had rained earlier in the morning and the entrance to the
Ambur outlet at Velachery was flooded but we managed to get in thanks to some
deft manoeuvring by the driver of our car. I was determined to try out the Ambur biryani and felt really thankful to the our intrepid driver. I was accompanied by Ajit Bangera, the senior executive chef of the ITC Grand Chola Hotel who was showing me around Chennai, and he was game to jump across the puddles with me.
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| The biryani obstacle course |
of biryani much to the bemusement of the staff at the Velachery Star branch. The staff had come
to Chennai from Nepal to work and spoke Hindi. I am making this point on people speaking Hindi repeatedly as one of the impressions outsiders often have of Chennai is that locals speak in Tamil making it difficult for non-Tamils to navigate shops, restaurants etc. Given the huge migrant population, that’s no longer an issue it seems.
They gave us banana leaves to have our food on at Star as they had at Thalappakatti earlier. I had once been given banana leaves to eat on in an Andhra restaurant called Nagarjuna in Bangalore too.
Our
waiter at Star gave a banana leaf to each of us though we had ordered only one biryani between the three of us. My lunch mates told me that the local practice
is to put a few drops of water from one’s glass on the banana leaf and then wipe this with the palm of one’s hand before
eating on it. I think they used to follow a similar practise with respect to eating on banana leaves in Bengal too.
short grained just as it was in the Dindigul one from Thalappakatti. It was not the long grained basmati rice that one normally finds in other biryanis. The rice in the Star biryani was a bit moist compared to what I earlier ate at Thalapakatti.
Ambur versus Dindigul
While the
Dindigul biryani had a brownish tinge to it, the Ambur one was yellow and had
pieces of tomato in it (which was not there in Dindigul). The mutton pieces were whole at Ambur and not cut into
small pieces as in the Dindigul biryani. The mutton in the biryani was pretty juicy . There
was a strong taste of garlic which took, some getting used to, in the Ambur
biryani.
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| The Ambur biryani at Star with the aubergine side dish |
The biryani at Star. was served with a semi dry brinjal dish unlike the dalcha which was given at Thalapakatti.
The biryani at Star (Rs 170 for mutton), was slightly cheaper than the Thalappakatti one (Rs 205 for mutton), and was spelt as ‘briyani’ on the menu.
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| The Ambur menu card |
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| Thalappakatti menu |
Thalappakatti was founded by a gentleman named Nagaswamy Naidu in a place called Dindigul in 1957, according to their website. They then spread out to Chennai and now have a branch in Paris too! Biryani is a dish traditionally associated with the Muslim community which is why I found it interesting that one of Tamil Nadu and Chennai’s most iconic joints was founded by a Hindu gentleman whose family still runs the business.
Star Biryani, on the other hand, was started by a Muslim family. According to their website, the founding owners used
to first sell biryanis from bicycles on the streets at Ambur before opening a
restaurant which has branched out since then and they apparently supply biryanis to trains stopping at the Ambur Station. According to this article in the Hindu, the Ambur biryanis a version of the Arcot biryani named after the region once ruled by the nawab of Arcot.
Chettinad biryani at Ponnusamy
masala flavour, which as chef Bangera pointed out, was more reminiscent of the
classic Muslim biryani of Hyderabad compared to the flavour palettes of the Ambur and Dindigul ones. The latter had rather distinct identities of their own different from biryanis that you will get in the rest of India.
The quality of mutton, or goat meat, was pretty good and the meat was succulent.
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| Chettinad biryani at Ponnusamy |
Another iconic biryani in Chennai is the one at the Buhari Restaurant. It doesn’t fall into any particular school of biryani I was told but is unique to the restaurant. I went to Buhari the day I went to Thalapakatti and Star. I didn’t have the biryani there though as I wanted to try out the iconic south Indian dish, Chicken 65, which Buhari claims to have invented in the mid 1960s. You can read more about experience with the chicken 65 at Buhari here.
A reader named Hari, left a comment about a biryani made with bone marrow which you apparently get in a restaurant called Sangam near the original Buhari at Chennai’s Mount Road.
Read his comment and you will realise why it makes me want to go back to Chennai:
“I recommend a unique dish called ‘Mutton Nalli Biryani’ @ Sangam Hotel, Mount road, two shops away from the original Buhari. This biryani is made with ‘nalli’ which are the juices from the bone marrow. This lends a very rich flavour to the rice but subtle enough not to overpower the meat or any other spices. Served with 2 large chunks of meat and topped with fried onions and cashews. Must try while in Chennai.”…Hari
As I wrote earlier in the post, biryani is not
something that people outside Chennai normally associate the city with with and yet there is
such a strong biryani culture in the city.
so little about worlds outside our own. And Chennai is in our own country! Travelling is always a good way to expand our horizons and get to know about
others. What is key is to have a hungry and open mind.
Here’s wishing Eid Mubarak to those celebrating and happiness, peace and great biryani to all.
My stay in Chennai was courtesy the ITC Grand Chola Hotel.
PS Here’s the link to the biryani Google hangout that I had conducted and that’s Amit in the screen grab
In recent times (last 1 year) I had the opportunity to taste biryanis in Chennai, twice. The first one was in Ayyaar hotel in the suburb (Avadi) and the next was a special mutton biryani of Dindigul Thalapikatti .. both of them was amazing in taste and texture. I prefer the lighter version and both the places had me wanting more ..
thanks for sharing your experience. Yes, they do offer interesting options
This maybe bit irrelevant. I am a vegetarian. Have plans of visiting Chennai in coming months. Let me know if there are any good pure vegetarian hotels serving pure veg biryanis. I love veg biryanis!.
Regards
Sai
Sai, all the biryani places have a veg version too. i haven't tasted them
Kalyan- Thanks for the mention. I urge you to try the biryanis in Bangalore as well. My top picks are:
1) Khazana Food Paradise in Johnson market- Beef biryani(small grain, fragrant, moist, fall of the bone meat-Bangalore Muslim style)
2) Aqni, Rahhams Richies, Chichabas Taj(Various outlets-Google can help)- Mutton biryani(Small grain, fragrant, melt in your mouth mutton-Bangalore Muslim style)
3) Gundu Pulao aka Chickpet Donne biryani aka Doppe biryani in Chickpet- Chicken & Mutton biryani( Small grain, characteristically green in color due to chillies, coriander, mint etc ground into a paste and added, served with a boiled egg and onion raita. Spicy and typical Karnataka style biryani or pulao if you will.
4) Shivaji Military Hotel in Banashankari- Mutton biryani(Small grain, exquisite meat cooked with the rice, green in color due to ground paste as previous, served with a sherwa(Ingenious meatless gravy made with meat stock) and onion raita. Run by Marathis but has become Bangalore's quintessential Biryani. Bangalore's contender along with Muslim style biryanis.
I can show you around next time you're here. Well, I used your guide to eating out in Bombay and would like to return the favor. I have been around India eating my way through, I strongly believe Bangalore is in contention if not the Best biryani city in India.
Best,
Hari
P.S. sorry for spamming your blog
Not spamming at all. Gives me many more reasons to want to go back to Bangalore. Thanks Hari