Exploring Hyderabadi Cuisine: Biryani, Sheermals, And Must-Try Delicacies In The City Of Pearls

It was only towards the end of the evening that Mr. B. Narsing Rao began to speak. His voice was soft, his French-cut beard strikingly white, and his expression sombre. We had just savoured the finest Hyderabadi cuisine—available exclusively at the members-only Nizam Club—and were now lingering over a kulfi that carried the faint, delightful memory of slightly scorched milk. Pillars soared through the vast room, supporting its lofty ceiling. The gentle clink of well-mannered cutlery filled the air. Outside, on a colonnaded verandah, men in dark sherwanis sipped Scotch, completing the scene of timeless elegance.

The meat in the biryani was buttery, the mutton chutney creamy and tangy, and the dalcha evoked all the comfort foods one could ever yearn for. It was excellent, Mr. Rao agreed, but why was it now confined to an exclusive club? "It used to be everywhere," he lamented. He reminisced about the biryani at Azizya near Charminar, the hot seekh kebabs of the old city late at night, the Orient Café where poets and artists gathered over curry puffs and tea, and the India Coffee House. His friend Shankar Melkote, a familiar face to Southern cinema enthusiasts, described bakra khori—a whole goat stuffed with a chicken and hard-boiled eggs, slow-cooked to perfection, and served surrounded by a ring of biryani.

None of this remains. Now, they agreed, there is only fast food and a haze of confusion. Nobody even knows what the authentic flavours were—how could they judge or even know what to crave?

Confusion was certainly what I felt as my taxi sputtered through a traffic jam stretching from Begumpet Airport to Punjagutta. I was searching for my old house, and when that proved futile, I began looking for anything remotely familiar. It had been 24 years, and while I had anticipated change, what I encountered was beyond anything I had imagined.

"When I go back, beta," an old-timer had warned me, "I want to slit my throat." The city, once known for its amla trees and hillock-sized boulders stacked one upon another, had now transformed into a smog-grey shopping mall, stretching from end to end. Walls were being torn down, and gardens razed to make room for more cars. Twenty malls were being constructed, and people were even coming to blows over parking spaces. It felt like a city on the brink of imploding.

"And in its place was a Shoppers' Stop, where my stone-floored house with its well and guava tree once stood."

A Brief History

Hyderabad, founded by Mohammad Quli Qutb Shah in 1589, was a legendary city where pearls were laid out by the thousands to be bathed in the morning sun. It was a city where an eccentric Nizam, who could fill entire rooms with jewels, chose to wear worn, ragged clothes. Where British Sahibs, despite purdah or perhaps because of the thrill of stolen glances, fell in love with the city's beautiful nawabi women. And where the wealthy gathered, almost at midday, for a breakfast that might include a rich khichri with kababs, paratha and keema, or nihari—a stew of goat's tongue and trotters, slow-cooked all night, and served with kulchas in the morning.

Few people desire such breakfasts anymore. "Everyone has to go to work these days," one old Hyderabadi remarked bitterly. "They have no time to eat." On the morning I went out in search of breakfast, many of the hurried masses seemed to have stopped by Chutney’s on their way to work. Chutney’s serves a different kind of food—the vegetarian fare of Andhra: dosas (sometimes with a twist, including a steamed version created for mega-star Chiranjeevi), mango uttapams, sour-sweet sambar, and an utterly delectable pongal. Every table was occupied, mostly by lively young people in their twenties, sporting plastic ID cards from software companies. Slender girls, in dresses with straps thinner than vermicelli, showed off their collarbones, while the men tried, unsuccessfully, to keep their eyes on their food. The girls nibbled at their dosas, then dispersed, chattering into the warm December sun like flocks of foraging birds abandoning their tree. The men followed.

Inside A Local Kitchen

A world away from them, Suraiya Suboor cooked lunch in her small kitchen, grinding fresh spices on an ancient, worn grinding stone passed down by her great aunt. She was making keema koftas and brown rice, filling the house with the rich aromas of mint, cinnamon, and fried onions. As she cooked, she spoke of charcoal and wood-fired stoves in courtyards open to the sky, of her great-grandmother’s cooking, which she absorbed as if by osmosis, and of the intricate networks of families who married into each other, sharing many things, including recipes that were kept secret from outsiders.

Suraiya Apa, however, is generous with her secrets. She insists, first and foremost, that you use "achaar ki mirchi" for cooking, along with the very best haldi. These two ingredients, she says, make all the difference. She also advises stocking up on saffron, almonds, chironji, and shah jeera when cooking Hyderabadi food. Be generous with the oil, and cook with complete devotion—no answering the phone or loading the washing machine while something’s on the fire. Don’t rush, she cautions. Meals, she says, should be eaten in silence and with fingers, not a fork.

We talked through lunch all the same, with Suraiya Apa describing elaborate wedding feasts and childhood picnics where meat was cooked on heated slabs of stone. She offered to make me tea after lunch, giving me a choice between "burquewaali" (half tea, half cream), "Suleimani" (just decoction), or "khada chamcha" (which has so much sugar you can stand a spoon in it). She rattled off recipe after recipe—three kinds of mirchi ka salan, including a simple version the less affluent might cook, mahe khaliya, murrel cooked in a rich sauce, khubani ka meetha, kacchi akhni ki biryani with marinated mutton and saffron, and dabal ka meetha (best made with bread from Rose Bakery). But these were special dishes. For a typical lunch, she explained, a family would likely have khatti dal, palak gosht, tomato chutney, and plain rice or phulkas. Even the poor would try to add a few pieces of meat to what they were cooking, as meat is integral to Hyderabadi food, with vegetables usually combined with mutton for those who can afford it. At most meals, the onion, lemon, and green chili were the only vegetables I saw. There can’t be too many goats alive in those parts.

I knew I would cook none of these dishes, so I asked her, as I had asked others, where a visitor could find the best Hyderabadi biryani. There was no disagreement—Shadab, they all said. Go to Shadab, near Medina, close to Charminar.

To reach the entrance of Shadab, my friends and I had to walk past a urinal with vapours so thick we felt like wafting genies, then cross a black-watered drain on a bridge made of conjoined plastic cartons. After carefully negotiating this wobbly footbridge, we arrived at a buzzing two-storey restaurant. The downstairs, open to the street, was exclusively for men, while the "family room" was upstairs. Still faint from the urinal fumes, we settled at a six-seater table, facing an aquarium with oversized fish, a grandfather clock, satin curtains, and chatty families. Nirbhay and Paramita, my 20-something "research assistants," ordered the works—kababs, nihari of tongue and trotters, biryani, and sheermals.

The food arrived in minutes and completely erased any memory of the street outside. Initially, I had hesitated at the thought of trotters and tongue, but the fragrant aroma of the nihari made me forget my misgivings. The sheermals were soft and spongy, and every grain of the biryani’s rice was infused with flavour. After we had finished eating in the respectful silence Suraiya Apa had advised, our waiter came over to chat. He told us that the entire staff in the "family" area upstairs—all 250 of them, including the cooks—were from Orissa. The biryani, once a proud dish of Hyderabad, was no longer being prepared by Hyderabadis, at least not at Shadab. A general manager from a five-star hotel confirmed that much of the city’s culinary workforce is Oriya.

Near Shadab, shops selling fruits, ammunition, and jootis lined an ancient stone arcade, filled with the mingling scents and shadows of the night. In front of it, an open space scattered with plastic chairs and sticky tables awaited customers. Beneath a smoke-filled sky, ice cream was being hand-churned at Famous. The icy treats were slapped onto aluminium counters, sliced, and served—all barehanded. We sampled ice creams in flavours of fig, muskmelon, mango, and chikoo, none priced more than Rs 8, while watching the night unfold at Moazam Jahi Market. The broken clock in the arcade's tower had long stopped at an indeterminate hour. Famous, which had been around for over fifty years, remained open until 2 AM to accommodate its diverse clientele—local shopboys, grease-streaked truckers, street-gazing youths, and middle-class matrons out for a taste of adventure.

The Chef's Take

How is Hyderabad's food different from Lucknow's? Many of the same dishes seem to appear in both cities. Chalapathi Rao, the then executive chef at ITC Kakatiya's Dakshin, who had just treated me to a fabulous meal ending with a delicate kheer made from buttery tender coconut, pondered the question. He explained that in Lucknowi cuisine, the focus is on aromas, with the use of ittars and saffron to infuse fragrance, whereas in Hyderabad, the emphasis is on masalas. The result is a distinctly different culinary experience. Rao's new venture, Simply South, is a celebration of Telugu culinary heritage.

Tasting Charm Of Old Recipes

Hyderabad's food is the sublime result of centuries of cultural blending and the coming together of different civilizations. Cooks from Iran introduced their culinary techniques — evident in the small Irani cafés that still dot the city's street corners. From regions like Telangana, Rayalaseema, and the coast came ingredients like tamarind (including its leaves and flowers), gongura, coconut, and groundnut — elements neither the Iranians nor the Lucknawis had used. The contributions of communities such as the Parsis, Anglo-Indians, Marwaris, and others enriched this cuisine, creating a delicate balance of flavours for a world of opulence and leisure. In this city of pillars and minarets, nawabi brides were gifted intricately made badam-ki-jaali in their trousseaus, while men rose at midday to multi-course breakfasts.

My envious friends in Delhi had demanded a taste of this food. I winced at the thought of transporting tiffin dabbas dripping with gravies, but as Mr. Rao had noted, things have changed. The food is no longer cooked on wood fires — that kind of authentic cuisine is reserved for lavish wedding feasts. However, Hyderabad House and Y2K now offer vacuum-packed local specialties that can safely travel to other places. In Secunderabad, Paradise Café, spread across three glass-and-chrome floors, serves kormas and biryanis non-stop, catering to around 1,800 people at a time. At its takeaway section, the staff, dressed in McDonald's-style yellow and red uniforms complete with baseball caps, efficiently toss foil packs of biryani faster than you can place your order.

"It's not the best," said Nirbhay, who has sampled every kind of Hyderabadi food. "But it's not too bad." At 22 years old, he already knows authentic from ersatz, having savoured his way through an abbatoir or two. Mr. Rao has reason to be hopeful.

The Information

Hyderabadi food was traditionally cooked on wood and charcoal fires, often with charcoal embers placed on the lid. Special dishes like patthar ka gosht, where mutton was cooked on heated slabs of stone, and tatti ka gosht, where the meat was grilled, are now rare. So is thikri ki dal—lentils seasoned with a piece of heated earthenware. To taste dishes like tamatar ka kat (boiled egg halves in a wonderfully spicy tomato gravy) and chigur ka salan (made with young tamarind leaves), you’ll have to get invited to someone’s home for a meal. Failing that, your best bet is a wedding feast, which typically begins with luqmi (fried semolina pastry stuffed with a bit of keema) and kababs, moves on to paratha and korma, and then to dum ka murg, bagharey baingan, biryani, sheermals, tamatar ka kat, and, if you're lucky, a raan mussallam. For dessert, you might have dabal ka meetha, a rich variation of bread pudding minus the egg, or khubani ka meetha, made with dried apricots and cream. Haleem, a delicious khichri of mutton and wheat, is abundant during Ramzaan. Chakna, a fiery stew of offal, can be found near liquor shops, for obvious reasons.