The food, explained
What dum biryani is, and why it is cooked that way.
This page explains the words you will see on a Hyderabadi menu: dum, the Single Biryani, the handi, Irani chai and haleem. The full list of dishes is on the menu page.
The word on every menu
What dum means
Dum is trapped steam. The vessel is sealed, traditionally with a rope of dough pressed around the lid, and left over a low flame, so nothing gets out. The rice finishes in the steam rising off the meat beneath it, not in water it was boiled in.
That is the whole of it, and it is why a dum biryani cannot be hurried or stirred: break the seal early and the steam is gone. It is also why the rice at the top of the pot tastes of what is at the bottom.
Where it starts
Hyderabadi biryani
Hyderabadi biryani is rice and meat cooked together in one sealed vessel, rather than cooked separately and mixed at the end. The meat is marinated before the rice goes over it, and whole spices and fried onion go in with it. It is served with mirchi ka salan, the gravy that goes alongside a Hyderabadi biryani, and with dahi raita. Both are part of the dish, not sides you could leave out.
Mehfil’s recipe comes down from the iconic Grand Hotel in Abids, which has been open since 1935 and is still run today by Mr. Jaleel Rooz, one of the two people who later started Mehfil. It made biryani available to everyone, not only the palace. Mehfil kept that method, and in 2006, at its first restaurant in Narayanguda, it changed the way biryani was sold in two ways: a plate full of biryani priced for one person, and a whole handi that anyone could buy for a group.
Narayanguda, 2006
The Single Biryani
The Single Biryani is a biryani portioned and priced for one person: around 700 grams, usually a little more. It is sold as a dish of its own, rather than carved out of a family order, and Mehfil first put it on the menu in Hyderabad in 2006, at ₹50.
The point was never only the price. It was that you no longer needed a table of people to share a biryani in order to eat one properly, which mattered most to students, to bachelors living away from home and to anyone eating alone on an ordinary day. Many biryani restaurants sell a single now, but in 2006 that was not how biryani was sold.
The other thing that changed in 2006
What a handi is
A handi is the pot itself: one wide steel vessel with its lid sealed with dough, cooked on dum in exactly the same way as the biryani that goes onto a plate. Nothing about the method changes with the size, so a handi is the same biryani, served in one piece. The two standard vessels serve 40 and 50, and beyond them it is cooked for however many guests you have, from 10 upwards, with no fixed upper limit. Mirchi ka salan and dahi raita come with it.
Mehfil did not invent the handi. In the same year, Mehfil became the first to sell a whole handi of biryani over the counter to anyone who wanted one, when until then a handi was something a caterer cooked to order for a wedding. The vessel itself is far older than Mehfil. What was new was selling it this way. How to order one is on its own page.
All day, and before it
What Irani chai is
Irani chai is not ordinary tea with milk. It is brewed strong and long, then mixed with milk that has been reduced separately, which is why it is thicker and darker than chai elsewhere in India. It came to Hyderabad with the Irani café owners, and it stayed.
It is poured from the moment a restaurant opens until it shuts, and a few of the restaurants open earlier than the rest for chai. There are biscuits alongside if you want something to dunk.
One month a year
What haleem is
Haleem is wheat, lentils and meat cooked down together for 10 to 12 hours and beaten until they are no longer separate things. The result is a thick, savoury porridge eaten with a spoon and finished with fried onion, mint and lime. It is filling enough to break a fast with, which is what it is made for, and because each pot takes most of a day, it is only made when there is a reason to cook it.
Mehfil makes haleem only during Ramzan. For that month it is made in chicken and mutton at every Mehfil except Box O’ Mehfil, which has a menu of its own, and for the rest of the year it is not made at all.
Charcoal, tandoor and the shawarma grill
Three different fires
A tandoor is a clay oven heated from the bottom, where food cooks fast and dry, either stuck to the wall or hung inside. A charcoal grill cooks with open heat from below, which is how seekh kebabs and tikkas are made. Shawarma is cooked on a tall rotating grill that turns beside the heat, and thin slices are cut from the outside as it cooks, so the edges stay crisp.
Mehfil’s tandoori dishes were recognised by ET F&B Delivery Icons in 2023, and its shawarma won Best in Shawarma at the Swiggy Restaurant Awards in 2024. They are two of the more than fifty awards the group has won since 2017.
This page does not list dishes or prices. Every dish Mehfil cooks is named on the menu, along with where it is served and whether it is vegetarian.
