Letter From New Delhi

Briyani delivery in India is recipe for success

The tasty and popular one-pot dish can be assembled quickly in cloud kitchens and is ideal for home delivery amid Covid-19 curbs

Food historian Osama Jalali preparing briyani at a cloud kitchen that he runs out of a farm in Gurgaon that uses firewood for cooking. (Left) Biryani Depot's cloud kitchen in Pune, which accounts for over 3,500 briyani servings every month, with mutt
Biryani Depot's cloud kitchen in Pune, which accounts for over 3,500 briyani servings every month, with mutton briyani (above) among several options on its menu. The delivery chain that started in August taps a formula that not only reaches out to customers wary of eating out, but also works around steep rentals. PHOTO: BIRYANI DEPOT
Food historian Osama Jalali preparing briyani at a cloud kitchen that he runs out of a farm in Gurgaon that uses firewood for cooking. (Left) Biryani Depot's cloud kitchen in Pune, which accounts for over 3,500 briyani servings every month, with mutt
Food historian Osama Jalali preparing briyani at a cloud kitchen that he runs out of a farm in Gurgaon that uses firewood for cooking. PHOTO: OSAMA JALALI
Food historian Osama Jalali preparing briyani at a cloud kitchen that he runs out of a farm in Gurgaon that uses firewood for cooking. (Left) Biryani Depot's cloud kitchen in Pune, which accounts for over 3,500 briyani servings every month, with mutt
(Above) Biryani Depot's cloud kitchen in Pune, which accounts for over 3,500 briyani servings every month, with mutton briyani among several options on its menu. The delivery chain that started in August taps a formula that not only reaches out to customers wary of eating out, but also works around steep rentals. PHOTO: BIRYANI DEPOT
Debarshi Dasgupta
India Correspondent
Updated
Dec 06, 2020, 03:04 PM
Published
Dec 06, 2020, 05:00 AM
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NEW DELHI • A briyani worth savouring is a daunting labour of love that can stretch over hours. But I am told I will have to wait no longer than 35 minutes for my order of Lucknowi chicken briyani.

I am at a Biryani By Kilo (BBK) kitchen in Noida, a Delhi suburb. It is a chain that transformed the painstaking centuries-old process of making briyani, which involves layering rice and meat in various stages of doneness into a pot that is sealed and cooked further, into a precision-driven dash. Briyani is known as biryani in India.

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Sunday Times on December 06, 2020, with the headline Briyani delivery in India is recipe for success. Subscribe

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