The Behrouz Biriyani

Today, I found another name in the food delivery app that I hadn’t seen before and its called Behrouz Biriyani… From the menu and the name its clear that Biriyani is the signature item and since today, I was feeling a bit of craving for Biriyani (among other things 😉 ), I thought of giving it a try and placed the order… However, after placing the order, I tried searching online for info about the place like I usually do and things didn’t go as I thought it would… First of all, the website doesn’t mention anything about their origin or where exactly they are located or even the fact about whether they are a restaurant or cloud kitchen… All that they mention is the list of cities in India where they deliver their food and a fictional / cooked up story about a 2000 year old kingdom where they claim their recipes are from, while mentioning in the fine print at the bottom of the page that its all just fiction and a product of the owner’s imagination created as part of a myth making exercise, which translates to me as “marketing gimmick”… The sheer lack of any straight forward information (even where exactly they are located with photos of the place) about them did end up making me worried wondering if this is some scam that I fell into by ordering, cause business owners tend to be very proud of their business and would want to keep themselves transparent to keep the public informed about themselves and their successes / achievements… As I dug deeper, I ended up finding a couple of news articles where in one, Behrouz Biriyani was mentioned to be a Food Tech company and Mr. Anuroop Nair is mentioned to be the owner, suggesting to me that this is basically not a restaurant but rather a Biriyani making Factory or Cloud Kitchen chain… The other one, appears to say that Behrouz Biriyani is a brand under the parent company Rebel Foods founded by a McKinsey & Co alumnus named Jaydeep Barman and the company has over 200 cloud kitchens spread across India and calls itself as the world’s largest internet restaurant company… Anyways, its too late to cancel my order now and I do wish they would be more transparent about themselves as the lack of the same can cause unnecessary suspicions and misunderstanding… Anyways, here we are 🙂

Coming to the food, the the menu here has 3 kinds of Biriyanis and I went for what they call as their Lazeez Bhuna Murgh Biriyani, which they say is a Biriyani made by marinating Boneless Chicken pieces with freshly ground Bhuna spices and then cooked in the Dum Pukth method with aromatic Rice and they serve this with a Gulab Jamun and Raita… Other than this Biriyani what caught my eye was the Murgh Kefta which they say is basically Minced Chicken Meatball Kebabs served with a Minty Dip… One thing that surprised me is that even though the menu says that the Biriyani is served with the Raita and Gulab Jamun, while ordering, it seems like you have to choose them and will get charged extra for those cause I went ahead and chose them thinking that I am ordering 1 extra each of them but only one set arrived as can be seen in the pics… And the “Minty Dip” along with the Kefta turned out to be just a salad of onions as can be seen from the pic below… I tried to raise a complaint but this popular app sadly doesn’t accept pics from the camera roll and instead expects pics to be taken live and for some reason, the app was crashing every time I tried taking and uploading the pics… So, I lost my patience with the app and I decided to just forget about it and move on… That being said, for Behrouz’s sake, I am hoping that it was a mistake cause otherwise, they really need to update whats written in the menu asap to avoid misleading potential customers…

So, first lets talk about the Lazeez Bhuna Murgh Biriyani… Chicken Bhuna or Bhuna Murgh is a popular dish in Northern parts of India that is said to have originated in the area thats presently the country of Pakistan but is quite popular in the Awadh cuisine… The word Bhuna means to fry or roast… So, typically Bhuna style cooking involves frying the spices in high heat and then letting the meat and/or vegetables simmer in them till they are cooked leaving a sort of dry curry with the spices sticking to the meat or vegetables in the form of a paste… So, I have had Bhuna Murgh before and the idea of having a Biriyani made with its elements seemed intriguing which is why I chose this particular Biriyani for today… It arrived as can be seen in the pics below topped with quite a generous portion of sliced Almonds… Coming to the taste, as soon as I opened the box, I could feel the fragrance of Saffron as well as the cooked Almonds… If I am not mistaken, I also felt the Frangrance of Rose as well suggesting that they used Rose Water as well when making the Biriyani… To be frank, I felt that this biriyani was nice… The Chicken pieces though not much considering the higher than norm price, were cooked perfectly that it hardly needed any effort to chew… The Rice was cooked well but what takes the cake here is the flavours of the Bhuna Masala thats used… Mace appeared to take the lead here along with ofcourse the Cardamom, Cinnamon, the Ginger Garlic paste which appeared to have caramelised to the right level where you get that slightly sweet and smoky taste… The quantity of the masala in this biriyani felt to be higher than what we usually see in the Biriyanis we get here, but overall flavours felt quite balanced if you mix the whole thing up… So, considering the scenario in Tvm, this is indeed a unique tasting biriyani, though it might be an acquired taste for many cause of it being not as spicy as the Biriyanis we see here… If you ask me, I would say that the spice level is kind of mid way between the usual Biriyanis and the Kuzhimandis…

Coming to what came with the Biriyani (by default or because I ordered extra, is still a mystery), the Mint Raita basically tasted of just Fresh Mint and Yogurt with minimal seasoning… My guess is that most of you might need to add some salt to it… The Gulab Jamun was decent, reminded me of the canned Gulab Jamuns we get from Haldirams in terms of flavours, though the Jamun felt a bit too tough to chew at the center… But its okay…

Now lets talk about the Murgh Kefta… To be frank I first thought that it must be a typo and what they must’ve intended to type was the word Kofta but turns out in many places like Morocco for example, Kefta is what they call what we call as Kofta… I expected this to be a succulent set of meatball kebabs that are tender and juicy and a delight to eat… However, what arrived felt like Sheek Kebab’s rolled and cooked into the ball shape and then coated in a spice mix that to me, tasted like a spicy version of the Chaat Masala… Unfortunately, the whole thing ended up being too salty for my taste and almost half of the given pieces felt overcooked and tough to chew… So, safe to say, I didn’t like this at all… But thats just me… If you are someone who likes food that are salty and spicy, you might be able to enjoy this… Feel free to try in that case… 🙂

So, thats it for now… Feel free to go ahead and try the food and let me know in the comment section below… #StaySafe 🙂