If Hyderabadi Biryani, Calcutta Biryani and Iranian Biryani are catering to palates all over the world, you can ready yourself to taste Bangalore’s own special rural biryani dishes.
If you haven’t heard of Cubbonpet biryani and were under the illusion that you’d tasted it all, here’s why it is a hot favourite for people living and working here — it is cooked using age-old traditional methods as practised in rural Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, where a thriving biryani culture defies veg-only norms.
While biryani might not top the list of Karnataka’s delicacies, it remains worth drooling over for most Kannadigas. If Hyderabadi Biryani, Calcutta Biryani and Iranian Biryani are catering to palates all over the world, you can ready yourself to taste Bangalore’s own special rural biryani dishes.
Bisi Bele Bath, Chitranna, Rotti and Holige may be some of Karnataka’s best known dishes, but Bangalore’s own Cubbonpet biryani is ready to join the bandwagon — thanks to Puttaraju, who started off his career as a caterer serving the who’s who of Bangalore’s list of bureaucrats.
The demand that he sensed for biriyani-with-a-twist pushed him to open his own restaurant — serving non-vegetarian food exclusively and Cubbonpet biryani specifically.
Puttaraju’s restaurant Cubbonpet Biryani Bazaar opened a year ago and has been doing brisk business ever since. It is popular among the crowd that works here, which includes lawyers, officials from the several government offices around Majestic and Vidhana Sabha and the locals.
The reason for this mass approval is because the restaurant serves traditional Bangalorean non-vegetarian dishes using traditional methods of cooking.
“Cubbonpet biryani has existed for over a century and it still follows the traditional method of cooking. Copper vessels are used to help retain the flavours and keep the food fresh for a longer time as compared to an aluminium vessel. Moreover, we wanted keep to the traditional way of serving food,” says Puttaraju.
The food is cooked in pots over a wooden fire in order to retain the flavours. The spices too are hand-ground and artificial flavours are avoided. Puttaraju adds, “Old Bangalore misses home-cooked food, which used ingredients that were natural and fresh and handground spices. Today, no one cooks this way as it requires attention to detail and is a cumbersome process.”
Every Bangalore biryani lover will swear by the fact that the best-tasting biryanis are the ones that use bannur kuri ( a variety of sheep reared in Mandya) and nati koli (country chicken). Puttaraju makes sure his biryani is made only using these.
With Ugadi around the corner, Puttaraju decided it was time to treat his customers to an elaborate non-vegetarian meal. He says,
“The day after Ugadi is a day to feast on meat. So I decided to hold a biryani festival on March 17. We’ll have a special buffet lunch at only Rs199 a plate and it will consist of five varieties of rural Bangalorean biryani and several other non-vegetarian delicacies.”
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