The Firdaus Biryani Story - Part 2 - Great Biryanis And Tryst With Mirch Ka Salan

Continued From Part 1

There are only three occasions when I felt "It does not get any better than this" after having a Biryani. Feb 17th 2005, the opening of erstwhile Hyderabad House, KPHB branch. The Lamb Biryani, made that day for the inauguration function was remarkable. Those were the days when the Hyderabad House brand was in its elements. I never had anything like that until i had the Prawn Biryani made by Santosh around July 2013. It was impeccable. The flavours, aroma, looks and taste, one could not ask for more. Couple of spoons into eating, I called Santosh and told him to pack 3 portions of the Biryani to go because i know, the boys will finish it in no time. Quite expectedly, by the time I went for a second serving, the Handi was already licked clean by the team. Sent two portions of the packed Biryani to Mazhar Bhai (Founder of Hyderabad House group) and ate the last one for dinner.

The third occasion was on April 21st, 2015, when we made the last trial before opening Firdaus, for taking food shots. Krishna who now leads the production at Firdaus Banjara Hills, only made one comment after eating it for a late lunch that day in his rustic Telangana dialect. " Idhi baagoledu ani veljoopinchi cheppalekapothunna Saar (Sir, This is it !)". I could not agree more with him.

"Sir, This is it!" Biryani

Going back to where we were. After eating that Prawn Biryani, when the team was asked to rate it. Everyone rated it 9+ on a scale of 1 to 10. A little about our scale here.

• 10 or 9 - Outstanding Product/Compellingly Good
• 8 - Good, But Can be Improved
• 6, 7 - Revisit the Recipe
• 4 or 5 -  You do not know what you are cooking
• 3 and Less - You are in Wrong Business

While the team members can give us any rating, it must be supported by objective feedback. Both for good and bad. Which means, they can't simply rate us 10 and keep quite. They must tell us, what aspects of the preparation make them feel it is so great. Similarly, for bad rating, they must tell us what is wrong with it. A Simple statement like "I do not like it" is not acceptable. In the areas of looks, aroma, taste, qualifying the feedback is must.

We continued cooking Biryani every Wednesday, refining the recipe and making changes to the quantity of ingredients, experimenting both with Prawn and Fish. Majority of the refinements were around Quantum of Oil, Brista (Onions fried to golden brown perfection). Santosh always preferred moderation, while I was in for over powering flavours. In the hind sight, Whatever Santosh's opinion was about a compellingly good product, proved to be right against my own intuitive judgement. One addition that we have done was including Cumin and Coriander powder in the recipe, which is typically not included in Hyderabadi Biryani. However, at a later point of time, we found them interfering with the experience and dropped them. Majority of refinements were completed by the time we hit 20th trial.  However, that did not stop our learning.

One of the major discussion areas for us was Mirch Ka Salan, literally meaning Curry of Chillies, which is generally served as an accompaniment with Biryani. My own take on Mirch Ka Salan was not very encouraging. There is nothing common between Biryani and Mirch Ka Salan recipes that makes both of them complimentary to each other for it to be made an accompaniment. The base of Mirch Ka Salan is Coriander Seeds, Dry Coconut, Poppy Seeds and Tamarind Pulp, none of which would you find in Biryani. As a matter of fact, if you check any of the Deccani/Hyderabadi cuisine cook books, you will not even find a mention of Mirch ka Salan, forget about it being the accompaniment. Biryani was always served with just Curd/Dhahi Chutney. The Bagara Baigan, recipe has been simply twisted to make Mirch Ka Salan by replacing Brinjal with Chillies. Everything else is the same.

The base for the wonderful flavours of a Biryani, its colour and moistness is the result of a composite set of ingredients like, Ghee, Curd, Oil, Brista, Milk and Cream. Now, each of these ingredients is expensive and a Biryani with full flavours of these Masalas and moist in nature (read double or triple masala) will obviously be costly. Compare this with what you typically get when you buy a biryani. Meat pieces with some masala around them. Some Masala Rice (not really full flavoured) and a whole lot of white rice. Now how does one make this evidently dry Biryani moist and flavourful. Simple, give Mirch Ka Salan as accompaniment. Peanuts, Dry Coconut, Coriander Seeds and Tamarind coupled with spices and whole lot of water to dilute it (obviously to be cost effective) will do the job. 

As a part of Biryani trial process, we did create and improve the recipe for Mirch Ka Salan and it in fact came out very well.  However, i was not in favour of offering it as an accompaniment. In our quest to offer a compellingly great Biryani, offering Mirch Ka Salan as an accompaniment did not fit in the bill. Other Biryani joints are doing this, either to please the customer who is used to getting it as a part of the package or to moist their dry Biryanis which are made that way for cost cutting reasons. We had no reason to do that. We could as well ensure that the quantity of the marination we use in Biryani is sufficient enough to ensure the Biryani is full flavoured and moist and thereby avoid the need for Mirch Ka Salan completely. All the more reason to do it is, it is not complimentary, it has just become a force of habit to mix it in Biryani and that too not all eaters eat if along with their Biryani. 

When I proposed this, the entire team opposed it. In the ensuing debate I lost that vote with some crushing opposition of 7 to 1 votes, with 7 out of the 8 team members opposing it and riduculing that no one is going to buy that Biryani which is not accompanied by Mirch Ka Salan.

To Be Continued.

The Firdaus Biryani Story - Part 1

Firdaus is not the result of a planned exercise to set up a Biryani serving Quick Service Restaurant. It is the serendipitous offshoot of a Discovery, Realisation and Opportunity, that was ready to be seized.  

Mid 2013 marked the beginning of my tryst with food trials. Fresh from the Bizquest 2012 win, we were high on spirits. Although, the Hyderabad Angels' term sheet did not materialise into actual funds flow ( Interesting case study for start ups seeking angel funding, I will probably write another blog post on this some other time) the resulting uncertainty (coffers drying up, i guess we already ran out of cash by then) did little to kill the excitement and buzz. One of the reasons probably was, had we taken the money from Hyderabad Angels, we would have had to do away with Pescetarian, our dream Seafood Speciality Quick Service Restaurant initiative. The mandate in the Terms Sheet was that we should only open Raw Seafood Outlets (GoodFish) and expand existing B2B (Shoal) Operations. 

Armed with a small trial production team, we have systematically started food trials for opening a Pescetarian Seafood Speciality Quick Service Restaurant (QSR). We tried to pick up best of the fish based items among indian and international favourites cutting across cuisines with the common thread being that it should be made of fish. In Indian cuisine, we picked up legendary favourites like, Nellore Chapala Pulusu (Spicy and Tangy Fish Stew), Kakinada Peethala Iguru (Crab Curry), Bheemavaram Royyala Iguru (Prawn Curry) for main course. Considering, the first restaurant would be opened in Hyderabad and considering Hyderabadis love Biryani, it had to figure out somewhere in the menu. We then decided, why not do an authentic Hyderabadi Fish & Prawn Dum Biryani. Everything would be the same, the ingredients, cooking process but for the meat. Instead of Chicken or Mutton we would use Fish & Prawn. 

A little about our approach towards food trials. The bottom line of the exercise is only one metric. Create an outstanding product, that compels the customer to revisit the restaurant again and again. Do not mistake this as an effort to create a perfect product. No, that was not the intention. I strongly believe, there is nothing called as a perfect product that will equally, appeal to the eyes, nose and tongue of all the customers. Any such goal would be idealistic. The idea was to create a product that would be liked by 70 percent of the consumers. Considering, rating food is a very subjective exercise depending on individual tastes and likings, we thought any more aggressive target will throw us of the track and defeat the whole purpose of the exercise. Once we discover the recipe that is liked by 70% of our team, we will freeze on it and then focus on  making it consistently right if not better than the previous time. Basically refine the recipe and standardise it for consistent results. Finally, document it in the form of recipe, ingredients weight in grams and a Standard Operations Procedure (SOP) for training purposes, to ensure repeatability and reproducibility. In another words, irrespective of who makes the dish and how many ever number of times one makes, the output in terms, of quantity and quality should be the same.We chose experimentation/trial and error as our approach for this. Basically, make three to four variants of the preparation, choose the best among them and refine it further. 

One of the first batches of Biryani

Coming to the Biryani part, for Santosh who was leading the food trials, cooking Biryani was nothing new. He had been employed previously in a Hyderabadi Biryani chain and as a part of that role dished out thousands of Biryanis. But the point here is to not dish out any biryani. It had to be compellingly good. So our first experimentation was with fish biryani. Although the biryani was tasty, it was far from earth shattering. The second and third trials had mixed results like, biryani getting burnt, too less cooking time resulting in water being left out.

Right from the start Santosh was unhappy about the Utensils we chose to cook Biryani and the quantity we were attempting to cook in the trial. He was of the opinion that we were trying to cook too less a Biryani and hence process standardisation and consistency in the results was too much to ask for. He was pretty confident that he was getting the ingredients right, it is only the vessel and quantum of heat that was making the difference. In hind sight, he was right about every single observation he made. But, considering I am not some one who takes No for an answer, I insisted on continuing the experiment the way it is.

We nailed it!

So, every 3rd day in a week we would cook Biryani, alternating between Fish and Prawn. One fine day, he produced this Fish Biryani and the entire production and support teams were full of praise. They loved it. Exactly, three days later Santosh cooked another round of Prawn Biryani with some Vannamei 24 count prawns. I regret not taking the photographs of that Biryani, but when we ate, we knew, we nailed it.

To Be Continued.