42 replies to this topic

[Wildflower]

Parking a link to an IndiaMike post about the kabab stalls near Shahran Hotel (Charminar, Laad Bazaar area)

[notsogifted]

visited hyderabad recently and, like a total nalayak, forgot to read up on this thread beforehand. thankfully, i did not do too badly going by the thread.

Kim, on Sep 16 2006, 05:10 PM, said:

Paradise does a good "special biryani" {mix of mutton & chicken} if u don't mind the oil. Its located just off the main road & any auto guy will take u there if u tell them.

Bawarchi's biryani is low on the masala. ITs more of a boiled rice mixed with coked chicken & this is not my type of biryani at all. Their quantity is solid tho.

My personal favorite in Hyderabad is "Hyderabad House" they have outlets all over the city & do a takeaway service & home delivery for a rs 30 charge. Their biryani is quite yummilicious & best eaten at the restaurant itself. If u r eating at hyderabad house, don't miss the shikampuri's. (I pack them & freeze them to bring back to Bombay when I visit hyderabad. ) The chicken roast is a slightly sweetish semi gravy item but worth trying. try the chicken 65 if u don't mind moderately spicy food.

paradise, mentioned upthread quite often, is where i had my first taste of hyderabadi biryani, and... i have nothing to compare it to, but much less oil than i'm used to seeing in dilli biryani and the meat was ultra soft. the first choice for a meal was hyderabad house but the branch i tried out was totally full, and there was no electricity on a hot day. will remember for a future visit.

[hima]

Avoid take out at Paradise. Upset all our stomachs when we tried it.

The best biryani memory I have is that of Alfa hotel near the Sec-bad railway station. But that was a loooong time ago.

Minerva Coffeehouse is pretty good - the one in Himayatnagar. Loved the idlis and uttapam I had there. I like Chutney's but it is a bit overrated, I think. They've also opened up a new branch in Himayatnagar.

Maybe I always go to the wrong places but I've never found good Andhra veg food in Hyd restaurants. There's no variety and they all usually live up to the stereotype of Andhra food being way too spicy. I'm sure there are better restaurants in other towns like Guntur, Vijayawada and Visag but I've not been to these places in forever.

I don't even bother actually because I get to eat the food I like at people's homes.

[bfuller]

Not fair for a hermit in semi-retirement to see a veritable blast from the past.  Yocs and KC and the dosa after at Baseraa indeed, those were the days!

My reco for phoren visitors to Hyderabad wanting to taste the local cuisine - stick to the star hotels for now.

1. Hotel Golkonda (Masab Tank) has the "Jewel of Nizam" restaurant - Hyderabadi cuisine
2. The Dakshin at the Kakatiya Grand Sheraton - typical s Indian cuisine
3. The Southern Spice on Rd No 3 in Banjara Hills - S indian with an attitude - more coastal (and absolutely avoid the N Indian food on the menu)
4. Baseraa had two restaurants when I went there last about 2 yrs back; the upstairs one still serves dosa and stuff but the ambiance of the old Kamat that preceded the Baseraa is long gone
5. the aforementioned Chutney is v good.

Oh, and other safe (from the upset tummy perspective) yet reasonably authentic dining options incl the Kabab-e-bahaar at the Taj Banjara, the Golden Dragon at the Taj Krishna and at the Belson's Taj Mahal Hotel in Secunderabad near the erstwhile Patny.

And KC's still meets every Friday evening at the Sec'bad YMCA so surprise yourself and drop in if you are there.

[hima]

bfuller! :wave:
Southern Spice is SPICY!!! Went there with my in-laws. We had to order 2 bowls of plain curd and 3 sweet lassis to cool off. Have you tried Southern Mirchi? It's within walking distance of Chutney's. Their Southern veg thali is good (I didn't care for the sorakaya halwa), but if you want to order individual dishes you don't see many interesting veg options.
I forgot to mention Ohri's Cuisine Court in front of the old Gandhi Medical College in Basheer Bagh. There are 4 different restaurants there, I've tried Ming's, Metro and Havmor, all pretty good.
There's some new-ish, fancy place called Punjabi by Nature which is pricey but supposedly worth it. I didn't get a chance to try it.
Another place I like somewhat is Basil - A Veg Affair, it's in the Lumbini Jewel Mall on Road No. 2 in B'jara Hills. Blue Fox and Fiesta in Minerva Grand (Sarojini Devi Road) are also okay. There was some fish dish I tried at Blue Fox that I really liked but I can't remember the name of it now.

[indiego]

Wildflower, on Sep 14 2006, 03:46 AM, said:

This Rayalaseema Ruchulu (the tastes of Rayalaseema) seems interesting.  Another review of the same place.

Thoroughly enjoyed food at Rayalseema Ruchulu today. Raagi Mudde Rayalseema style and country chicken..Awesome!

[Wildflower]

indiego, on Oct 26 2010, 11:25 AM, said:

Wildflower, on Sep 14 2006, 03:46 AM, said:

This Rayalaseema Ruchulu (the tastes of Rayalaseema) seems interesting.  Another review of the same place.

Thoroughly enjoyed food at Rayalseema Ruchulu today. Raagi Mudde Rayalseema style and country chicken..Awesome!

Good to know, Indiego.

[bfuller]

hima, on Mar 12 2009, 12:33 PM, said:

bfuller! :wave:
Southern Spice is SPICY!!! Went there with my in-laws. We had to order 2 bowls of plain curd and 3 sweet lassis to cool off. Have you tried Southern Mirchi? It's within walking distance of Chutney's. Their Southern veg thali is good (I didn't care for the sorakaya halwa), but if you want to order individual dishes you don't see many interesting veg options.

Yes, did try Southern Mirchi after hearing of it from you, Hima - sorry never did post an update.  

On a related but different note, this can go either here or in the Boston dining thread - but a part of the family that owns Minerva Coffee House in Himayatnagar/Bashirbagh have opened a place in Natick of the same name - Minerva.   Extensive buffet but the best part there is the pesarattu.

For sheer nostalgia value, Minerva Coffee House was known by some other name in the same location in Himayatnagar - I am drawing a blank now.

Another pair of old favorites of mine were the two little competing restaurants - Ramayya's and Chalamayya's in the Ramnagar/Adikmet area.  Their owners were related in some way, I am not sure how, but they had the best idlis around there and also their ariselu were to die for.

[indiego]

bfuller, on Oct 27 2010, 02:25 AM, said:

For sheer nostalgia value, Minerva Coffee House was known by some other name in the same location in Himayatnagar - I am drawing a blank now.

Don't know its once upon a time name..but spend time in that place..waiting for a comrade to come back from his appointment with the dentist...Minerva very close from Makhdoom House , CPI State Headquarters in Himayatnagar.

[loislane]

I did a fair amount of eating out during a few days in Hyderabad recently. Two things that were against me were that I don't like rice, and I don't care for very spicy food. Overly spicy hot food is just not my thing, and even the average lunch that was brought in from some local restaurant (usually Ohri's) had me reaching for water or a soft drink.

In general, food was just fine, but I wasn't blown away by anything in particular.

Quick recap: Steamed dosas and idlis at Chutneys were pretty good, and from what I heard from a few people, it is as good as it gets for vegetarian food in Hyderabad.

The Chocolate Room was really fun. I split a chocolate sizzler with a co-worker and took back some chocolate pizzas for other people at work. Their menu is _huge_ and I wish I had more visits to try some other things there.

Minerva in Jubilee Hills had decent food, but lazy service. (My driver insisted that the food there is not good, because it is pheeka, and I insisted on going there).

I had the Vegetable Biryani and Quabani ka Meetha at Paradise in Hi-tech City, but  neither was anything to write about.

If there is anything I really miss, it is the excellent cappucino at work, made with Cafe Coffee Day beans.

I see Hima mentioned Basil - someone else recommended it to me as well, but did not get a chance to go there.

[hima]

loislane, on 11 March 2011 - 02:26 AM, said:

I did a fair amount of eating out during a few days in Hyderabad recently. Two things that were against me were that I don't like rice, and I don't care for very spicy food. Overly spicy hot food is just not my thing, and even the average lunch that was brought in from some local restaurant (usually Ohri's) had me reaching for water or a soft drink.

In general, food was just fine, but I wasn't blown away by anything in particular.

Quick recap: Steamed dosas and idlis at Chutneys were pretty good, and from what I heard from a few people, it is as good as it gets for vegetarian food in Hyderabad.

The Chocolate Room was really fun. I split a chocolate sizzler with a co-worker and took back some chocolate pizzas for other people at work. Their menu is _huge_ and I wish I had more visits to try some other things there.

Minerva in Jubilee Hills had decent food, but lazy service. (My driver insisted that the food there is not good, because it is pheeka, and I insisted on going there).

I had the Vegetable Biryani and Quabani ka Meetha at Paradise in Hi-tech City, but  neither was anything to write about.

If there is anything I really miss, it is the excellent cappucino at work, made with Cafe Coffee Day beans.

I see Hima mentioned Basil - someone else recommended it to me as well, but did not get a chance to go there.

Veg food in restaurants is indeed very so-so in Hyd, from my experience. The thing to do is get yourself invited to some uber Brahmin family functions and stuff your face there. Or just get out of Hyd and visit other towns in Andhra. I keep thinking of the tiffins we used to eat in Guntur and how delicious they were. And of this one Bhadrakali temple in Warangal that makes the world's best tamarind rice as prasadam.

[Jenni]

My Dad and I are in Hyderabad at the moment. We only have a few days here, but I have a small report on what we have eaten so far.

This morning I was unable to get Dad out of hotel early enough to eat breakfast with me, but I went to Minerva Coffee House (in Amrutha Mall). I had the pongal.At Rs.69 it is pretty expensive for a plate of pongal, but then again the serving was quite massive. The coconut chutney it came with was divine, and there was also what I want to say was tomato pachadi, which was almost very good but not quite right. The sambar was too sweetish for me. This may just be personal preference - I hate the sambar in Bangalore too. It just doesn't taste like sambar to me. Overall it was pretty good but not mind blowing.

Then in the afternoon we went to Chutneys (the branch in Banjara Hills). First of all, here are the chutneys and sambar. The separate katori on the right (next to the sambar - which again was sweetish and not to my taste at all) had what again I want to say was tomato pachadi. It was divine. There were pieces of corn in it for some reason, and although that seemed weird, it worked. Now on to the chutneys in the...er...chutney-serving-device. Bottom closest to the pachadi and sambar had a roasted dal flavour to it, then going clockwise from that there was allam pachadi (that delicious sweet-gingery pachadi that I love so much), then a peanut-y chutney and finally a sweet coconut chutney. All of them were absolutely delicious. I could have eaten all of them by the spoonful quite happily.

But I didn't, I was quite civilised and had the steamed dosa. It was spongy, light and really tasty. The picture really doesn't do it justice, it was simply perfect.

(Sorry, don't know why this pic is so big). I was aware my Dad was very hungry, so I suggested he get the MLA pesarattu. I then demanded a taste (hey, I gave him some of my dosa). It was very very good, I was quite tempted to steal more when he wasn't looking.

My Dad also had a coffee, which he was unimpressed by. Overall I was very pleased with this meal and I think we will probably go back for breakfast the day after tomorrow.

I wouldn't mind some recent biryani recs if people have them. It is sort of short notice as we will go out for that tomorrow lunchtime. But just in case anyone sees this, I thought I would ask. I appreciate that in order to get my Dad a good biryani, I will probably be stuck with crappy veg choices, but I am prepared for that.

Other plans will probably include checking out Shilparamam because I like the sound of what Wildflower posted above:

Quote

Shilparamam has a changing selection of food stalls. When I was visiting there were some that were serving excellent jowar roti with green tamarind pod chutney, assorted dals and subzis.  Also some stalls that were serving the simple food eaten by various Andhra tribal communities (bamboo seed "rice" with mahua flowers etc.) very very interesting.

[Jenni]

For breakfast today we went to Abids Bistro, which is in the Mecure Hotel just off Chirag Ali Lane. I chose it because it recently won some sort of award for having the best vegetarian food in Hyderabad (in the hotel restaurant category). I probably wouldn't have chosen to go there otherwise. My first impression was "Argh it's very expensive" because I am a cheapskate and I am also nervous of expensive restaurants as they often tend to be crap.

Anyhoo, Dad had the pongal. It was bloody expensive but it came in a massive bowl and could easily have served 2 or even 3. It was looser than most restaurant pongal. I had a spoon and it was tasty. My Dad enjoyed it a lot, he pretty much tried to eat all of it!

I had the uttapam. Well, two mini ones. They were disappointing. They did not have the right taste, you know that slight tang. Also they were rather heavy. I suspect the batter was not properly fermented. On the plus side, the sambar was good - none of that sweetish nonsense. The chutney was decent, nothing special.

By the way, Abids Bistro does offer a buffet for breakfast, but we did not have it as in my experience buffet tiffin items are often rather limp. Overall I was happy to be somewhere with sambar that I liked, and the pongal was good, but I was not impressed by the quality of my uttapam. I suspect that their lunch time meals are quite good, as they seem to do ok in the rice and side dishes category. Perhaps they are just not that good at tiffin items. For the price, it is disappointing to not get perfectly executed food, and that means that I would not be rushing back.

For the main bulk of the day, we abstained from eating too much as I wanted to make sure we were hungry enough for my Dad to do justice to some biryani! Just had some juice and some fruits.

Then this evening we went to Hotel Shadab on High Court Road (Medina). We went upstairs to the AC bit which was quite swish. The downstairs bit is very casual (nothing wrong with that btw, I just wanted to treat my Dad). I ummed and aaahed a bit over what to suggest for my Dad as there was a Special Mutton Biryani (boneless) and then the regular mutton biryani (presumably bone in). In the end I was seduced by the word "special" and told him to get that one, but immediately after placing the order, I felt that I should have made him have the bone in one for the proper flavour...oh well, it was too late. I ordered the veg "biryani". This is what a non-deluded person would call pulao. I won't grumble though, as I was coming here for my Dad and knew I would have a limited choice.

To retaliate against this I decided to be greedy and have falooda. It was sticky, sweet and entirely a bad idea to try to have with biryani and the pudding that I was already planning for us....Well, at least I'll die happy.

Here is the mirchi ka salan and raita-ish thing (I think properly it is referred to as dahi chutney). Both were very good and perfectly complimented the rice.

Here is the "special" mutton biryani. It doesn't look very attractive, but that's mostly because the waiter served it out before I could get a shot of it in the dish, which looked better. The serving is huge by the way, for more than one person. We already knew that would be the case, but what can you do when one person is vegetarian? My Dad really enjoyed this. He is definitely not knowledgeable about biryani, but on the other hand he is able to say when he likes something. He said the mutton was really tender and tasted brillant, and that the whole thing was nicely aromatic.

Here is my veg "biryani". It was nice enough as a pulao, I won't moan. Not highly seasoned, but well cooked rice at least and with a pleasent selection of veg and paneer. I was happy to get my Dad something good and I certainly didn't starve because with the mirchi ka salan and the dahi on the side it was a reasonably satisfying meal. Plus I was also stuffing myself with falooda.

If we weren't already stuffed enough, we had to have the qubani for pud. We split a bowl (I may have actually died from sugar overload otherwise - after the falooda I really didn't need anything more in the sweet department!). There was a satisfied silence as we ate this, it was a perfect finish.

Except then I insisted we have tea, because it was supposed to be good. It was. We were happy. I was beginning to slip into a diabetic coma, but I was going cheerfully.

It's hard for me to really give this place a proper review, because I obviously didn't eat the mutton biryani, and my Dad is in no position to assess any biryani with authority. But he really enjoyed it, and there were enough other people eating there to suggest that it's a well thought of place. Certainly the reviews online that I glanced at before choosing to go there made it seem good. We had a nice evening, and I've got a very satisfied non-vegetarian sat next to me now.