Paradise City

My work involves a fair bit of travel, which can be exhausting but it's great when I can squeeze in a good meal that I can talk about.  On a recent visit to the City of Pearls, Hyderabad, I came across one such venue that you cannot afford to miss out on if you’re ever there.

What started off as a mere tea stall in 1953, is now one of Hyderabad’s most visited landmarks.  A super popular restaurant that seats over a thousand patrons at a time and serves between 4 to 5 thousand guests a day, run by one Mr. Ali Hemmati, is Paradise . Now that’s what I call good business. What’s the main attraction? The most delicious biryani you'll ever find. A dish fit for nawabs and nizams alike. So when my colleagues told me about Paradise, I made sure to fit in a luncheon on our last day of work and boy am I glad we got to go.

As we queued up to enter the restaurant, we were quickly pushed through a small security check-point and shuffled past posters filled with celebrities into a busy elevator, to head up to the 2^nd level of the building that is Paradise restaurant. The restaurant occupies the entire block, goes up 3 levels and has outdoor terrace seating as well.

Basic décor, professional and extremely busy staff and service that was much faster than I expected, given the sheer gathering of people that were seated around us.

Knowing what we were there for, we quickly sent in our orders and in no time here’s what we got; Egg Biryani, Chicken Biryani and Mutton Biryani brought in traditional small bronze handi’s (deep, narrow mouthed Indian pots) to share between us. The biryani was served with a portion of Curry Sauce, a thin Yoghurt Raita and a plate of sliced lemon wedges.

When we burrowed into the pots to fill our plates, we got spoonfuls of perfectly layered portions of fluffy, aromatic basmati rice on deliciously soft curried meat that fell off the bone, flavoured with an assortment of spices and ofcourse a burst of yellow-orange saffron. Just wonderful!

As we dug into the food the flavours all came together beautifully. Each individual biryani that we had ordered, had its own distinct flavour. The curry sauce added a spicy kick to the meal and the yoghurt raita added a refreshing coolness to the contrast of rich, exotic spices and flavours that just delighted the senses.

Although this one pot wonder might look like a simple dish, it’s a complex one to cook and undeniably worth all the effort at the end, especially if it’s anything like what we enjoyed in Hyderabad, where we were truly in paradise.

A scan of their website taught me that the restaurants vision is, “To be among the top ten restaurant brands in India by 2015, both in terms of revenues and customer satisfaction” and I can tell you that from what I saw, they are definitely on their way. Good luck Paradise and may we soon meet again :)

Address: 

Paradise Restaurant,

Besides Prasadz IMAX Multiplex,

NTR Gardens,

IMAX Rd,

Hyderabad- 500004.

Website:

Paradise Restaurant