’Dekhiye’ says famous Mehmood Mian of Karachi’s popular biryani joint, ’Karachi jiddat wala sheher hai. It is a city of innovation.’ The people here, he says, ’are total all-rounders. Those who work here know how to create jiddat’ —how to innovate — ’so you can understand biryani itself as a form of jiddat.’
Karachi got its name from a brave woman in one of the earliest fisherfolk fables, Mai Kolachi, who resiliently defeated sea monsters threatening to eat her brothers and fought for her people on other mystical fronts.
Like its namesake, the city has an equally (if not competitive) fiery centre, reflected in its various arrays of biryani, emerging from a multitude of migrants — from Gujrat, Bombay, Lucknow and Hyderabadi to name a few, while many more merged into the existing recipes of the Sindhi fishermen community of the coastal islands. One of the popular joints of the ancient remnants of the folk fables, for example, is the city favourite Jheenga Biryani (prawn biryani) in an area called Ibrahim Hyderi, otherwise famous for its budding street footballers.
Aside from the novelty of eating on metal plates in hot open rooms with smoky, sweltering sweat for companionship and loud minibus drivers for entertainment, the city has an array of as-old-as-time famous joints that Karachiites (including but not limited to my Karachi-born-and-bred husband), love to narrate old stories about, such as the Student Biryani, Telefood, Daily Dubai Restaurant, Biryani of the Seas, or the famed entrepreneurial White Biryani.
But Karachi is the city of fables and much more — every joint owner has a story to tell about their unique offerings, and if that is anything, it brightens up the food being served. The most popular is situated in the heart of Karachi, Kharadar. The decade-old family business, Al Rehman Biryani has online reviews topping a million, an array of YouTube videos in ode of, waiting lines every second of every day, a new cauldron unearthed every 20 minutes and an owner who is cited to claim that their special ingredient is their love.
(such emotionally colourful and creative people, my karachiites, dear reader!)
Then we have the Mustafa Thaal Biryani, outside a certain dusty Bambino Cinema (bambino I suppose is italian for baby, and i told you, dear reader, karachi can dumbfound you on many levels!) in retro Saddar. The exclusive hype of the biryani is a bit of a theatre act in itself, such that it is available only once a week. A Suzuki pickup entrepreneurially pulls up next to the cinema every Friday, with multiple cauldrons of biryani creating talab (desire) in the people for more. His biryani has a sort of aromatic symphony that can be associated with a Hyderabadi Biryani, others say Gujarati, traces of West Bengal and Dhakka, or very Sukkur-style. But essentially, the owner claims, its spicy core has evolved out of the spicy, colourful cosmopolitan of Karachi, where ’people from every community tend to merge into each other, you get me?’
The Ghausia Nalli Biryani has many die-hard patrons, in the haphazard post-partition neighbourhood, Liaquatabad, an area more popularly known as Lalukhet because it was built on agricultural land that used to be owned by a pre-partition Hindu farmer named Lalu. This heirloom biryani, an immigrant from Fatehpur in India, is preposterously cooked in the broth of Nalli (bone marrow), instead of oil or ghee, which makes it an ancient-recipe-creatively-distinguished-into-anew. 'Dil bagh bagh hogaya' (literally: my heart has become full of roses and gardens; to be immensely delighted) claimed one Youtuber in his ode to this biryani.
The Al-Fareed Pakwan Center of Gulshan-e-Iqbal also belongs to a second-generation immigrant from Delhi and Bombay who was in his early years famed for being the fastest in chopping vegetables. His entrepreneurial biryani, he claims, is the king of biryani because it has just the right amount of the ancient spices of nutmeg, mace and cinnamon — the lifeblood of the dish. ’You know how they say when you can sense something from afar, but your brain can’t quite decipher it precisely. That’s how you need to use these spices,’ he claims.
The decades-old migrant Pashtun-owned (originating from Peshawar) Malang Biryani and Pulao is in West Wharf, a Sindhi and Balochi majority area where biryani brings the three races, with their racial animosities, together. On YouTube, numerous videos claim to reveal its secret recipe and one such video is titled the ’Most Wanted Malang Biryani Karachi’. This biryani itself is an adventure because a simple Google search will not reveal its exact location. Instead, one must befriend someone who can direct one through crossways, highways, streets, industries, and narrower alleyways to reach the joint.
Another immigrant highlight is the Hyderabadi style Abu Mian Cooking Corner and Sheermal House, in the Hyderabad colony sitting alongside iconic achaar shops and pre-partition trained tailors who can still cut sherwanis the Mughlai Nizam style. The owner hails from a family of pre-partition craftsmen who would decorate swords for the royal Nizam, and now he cooks unique magic — with meat marinated over hours, saffron-infused milk, crushed almonds and curd — ingredients otherwise uncommon in Karachi.
iv. intersections of the personal & collective//layering
the Ordered Disorder of the Biryanis of Karachi, and the Indian Subcontinent
AUTHOR’S NOTE
i do believe, dear reader, that the most beautiful thing about my Greatest Biryani is that it belongs to everyone and also no one, an infusion of all, don’t you think?
dear reader, it has become clear to me, and perhaps to you too, that the city of karachi does indeed have a vast array of biryanis, and that hence it is the point of departure and the point of return for the biryani, and that there is no one definitive style but also, there is such acceptance for all variants that it enflames the doors to innovators to constantly embellish the recipe of the biryani, and so much so, that perhaps one of the most robust south asian inventions — the biryani masala packet — was also created right here dear reader, for anyone who has made south asian food and does not want to buy a plethora of spices, has used or has heard of or has seen in some south asian kitchen — the shan masala.
shan foods was launched in 1981 by a muhajir, sikander sultan, who claims that his house had three stoves besides the one in the kitchen, and his mother, a kashmiri wed to a delhiite, often created spice mixes, as do most women in pakistan, who do this for several reasons, dear reader, to quicken tasks, to bring the taste of whole spices to a dish without them appearing as chunks while eating, and to send spices to family abroad, dear reader, also like my mother-in-law who regularly posts me her brilliant concoction of home-made chaat masala, which believe me you, is 100 times better than the one boxed by shan masala, but maybe dear reader, someday i can host you over for dinner and you can try it for yourself, as i love to sprinkle it over some yoghurt or raita boondi, oh, pretty much anything, or i also often marinate chicken with it as i just did last night, in fact, for dinner later today, dear reader, and of course, you are welcome to join me.
young entrepreneurial sikander saw the potential in his mothers ventures, the first in years of men noticing potential in the women’s kitchen beyond the stomach, but i will not digress again, dear reader, and let’s leave gender politics for the next part perhaps, but the shan masala became a sort of custodian of tradition by making the recipe globally and readily available to anyone wanting to cook, regardless of skill or expertise, and it gave women a certain level of apparent freedom, or ease of working, by reducing their cooking time, but gender politics again, as the kitchen is such a politicised arena in our region, and it is ironic because i ran from the kitchen all my early years, wanting to become a successful corporate working woman, and scoffed at wasting time in the kitchen, but here i am, circulating back towards food as the highlight of my life, writing words upon words on the Greatest Biryani itself, but also, dear reader, the boxed shan masalas had an indelible impact on the biryani landscape of karachi and south asia, and many of my indian, bangladeshi and even afghani, irani and nepali friends here in germany swear by the effectiveness of the shan masala biryani box to instantly feel like home, and that is why i say that the various different biryanis travelled across the vast landscape of south asia, and learnt many lessons, but it is karachi where the beloveds all returned home to find their most rejoiced forms, and it is here that the shan masala concocted different types, such as a saffron infused delhi biryani masala, sindhi biryani masala (inspired by the recipes of the sindhi workers in sikander’s factory), memoni biryani masala (developed from the yakhni pulao made by gujarati-speaking bantva memons with their origins from junagadh india), hyderabadi biryani masala, a bombay biryani masala (that was inspired from his bombay-an inlaws), and a fish biryani masala (that originates from parsi and aga khanis recipes).
it is the entreprenuerial and diverse spirit of Karachi that has given us so much, dear reader, because, if i am most honest, as i prefer to be with you, the best biryani that i have had in the city of karachi was by a man who would ring doorbells of all the apartments in my building, with boxes of homemade biryani every saturday afternoon, and the first time he offered to sell us biryani from his bag, we were in doubt and did not know what to expect, but we wanted to help him and encourage him and admired his entrepreneurial spirit, and so we bought one box, and the biryani was so special, dear reader, that the man became a regular in our block of buildings and the preceding blocks too and the ones after, as the mysterious-man-who-would-appear-every-saturday-with-home-made-biryani-boxes and then one day, he disappeared and was never to be seen again, and i wish i knew where he was, because this was a time before mobile phones were so common and which is why, he did not have one and we never saw him again, but then i also sometimes wonder, is this story a concoction of my mind, or did it really occur, dear reader?
thinking about this land today, dear reader, and writing about it, feels almost reverent, and makes me miss home, dear reader, and nothing else has been making much sense lately, nothing else quite feels like home, because another episode occurred with me today, whereby a local man created quite a public commotion and shouted at me for taking up more space than i should on a table, where he wanted to read a newspaper, and i understood his german late again this time, but he was seemingly frustrated because he said so many people like me come to his country, and do not know how to behave in public spaces, and we spread all our things like we are camping here, but that this is not a refugee camp, but a library, and i was dumbfounded, dear reader, because for one, i was not taking up more space than i should have, and two, the central library is a public space for everyone to come together and read and learn and write, is it not, and three, i wanted to tell him dear reader, that not all brown, black and yellow skinned people are refugees living in refugee camps, but more importantly, even for those that are refugees living in refugee camps with no internet and most often, basic supplies, the library is a place to come feel grounded and connected and meet and learn, is it not?
but the world and its people dumbfound me every time, and i think, then, what is it that can make us all understand that we have the same roots, that we can share and live and eat together, each one of us has whispers of wisdom that flutter through us and the ecosystems that connect us, and it is in such times, dear reader, that i miss the terrible traffic jams that would get me frustrated and late to work in karachi, the loud chants of the ’teen dabbay wala’ (the one with/of tins and cans), ’raddi wala’ (ragpicker), ’pressure cooker theek kawra lou wala’ (the one who fixes your pressure cooker), the ramadan sehri time ’seeti wala’ (the one who whistles, the whistler, the reminder) that would keep me up at night or while i was pacing my room learning for an exam the next day — i miss them all, dear reader, the sight of the beach with completely out-of-place camels and horses along the shore, the pakora (vegetable fritters) and karrak chai (strong, often spiced, black tea cooked with milk) and namak paaray (salty bites) stands and the best biryanis of Karachi on late nights and early mornings alike, the scorching heat and power shutdowns, the diversity and the acceptance, and the ability to create something mesmerising out of it all — a dish that has all my heart and all the hearts of all the people in the world and throughout history — the Greatest Biryani.
THE AUTHOR’S GREATEST BIRYANI - LAYERING
As the meat simmers on your stove, dear reader, and it feels soft, almost soft to the touch, the layering process begins, a careful arrangement that will define the final dish, so then, in a large pot, a layer of rice is spread over the meat, some meat, another layer of rice follows, then meat, each step building upon the last, much like the layers of personal and shared memories, these layers create a depth that is rich, complex, and intertwined, and each layer brings its own texture and taste, yet together they form a harmonious whole, mirroring how individual and collective stories create a tapestry that is both personal and communal, inseparable but distinct, each essential to the dish’s depth, and each enriched by the presence of the other.