Night Run to Hyderabad City

We finally made a run to Hyderabad on a Friday night. We didn't get to see much as we came at night and couldn't stay long but at least we got a taste of Hyderabad, literally. As I said earlier, here it's all about the Biryani. Our target was the Paradise Restaurant, which has been famous for the best biryani in Hyderabad for almost 60 years I guess. It's a massive three or four story restaurant festooned by neon. 

The Paradise in Secundabad

To get to Paradise we drove for 90 minutes from Ramoji Film City, and that's at night with comparatively little traffic. That took us through the outskirts of Hyderabad and then through some of the shopping districts where while I was seeing stores that looked a bit more like what I think stores are supposed to look like, but the rest of the car, mostly Mumbaikers were marveling at the sheer scale of the showroom floors. "All that just saris! That's too big!" was a typical comment. 

Hyderabad streets are much much better than Mumbai. They felt totally smooth. Mumbai is constant potholes, broken roads and cobbles, Even the best parts of town have bumps. Hyderabad seemed much more open in comparison, which resulted in easily 60% of people staying in their lanes, as compared to 0% in Mumbai, and less weaving and honking. OK, we still had people crossing the median in front of us on foot on cycles and yes even in speeding cars coming at us on the wrong side of the road, but it still seemed like there was some order. We even saw people stop at traffic signals though our driver did not!

We drove through the center of the city where some of the old British forts remain and saw the lake with fountains and statues out in the water. We ended up across the lake in the part of town that is technically Secundabad where the restaurant is. We had Chicken and Veg Biryani and some chicken kebabs and a chicken sausage of some kind that had really spicy peppers in it. There was mint chutney, curd for the veg biryani and a spicy chicken gravy for the chicken biryani. All very delicious. The most special part of the biryanis here is the sophistication of the seasoning. Lots of different spices are mixed to create just the right balance of heat and flavor. The biryani we had was seasoned with cinnamon and cardamon as well as pepper, masala and curry powders. Really really good.

Biryani!

Yow.

We topped off the evening at Famous Ice Cream where we had desserts which I was told are unique to Hyderabad: a mish-mash of all kinds of ice-cream of different colors and flavors all crammed together in a dish called a "Special" packed with nuts and little gelatin sweeties and such.

That was pretty good, too.

So we finally got out of Film City at least for a few hours. We didn't do any shopping but that's life on the set when you are pressed for time.