HYDERABADI ZAIQA
I have guests in town who wanted indian food. Figured it was a good chance to try this place.
On a weeknight, i was surprised to see a crowd outside. Turned out it was mostly for takeout, but there were still a few people waiting for a table. The two guys seemingly running the show inside nodded at me when I put my hand up for how many, but didn’t want to take a name when I offered. I don’t know how they were planning to remember the order, so the people outside sorted ourselves so there wasn’t confusion (which, of course, there was).
Anyway, the food. We ordered the Gobi Manchurian appetizer, palak paneer, paneer makhani, and goat dum biryani.
The biryani, which should have arrived last, arrived first, even before the appetizer. They were serving another table biryani so why not just plate and serve all of it at once?
The Manchurian arrived after that, and was quite good — freshly fried and crisp, which made up for the sauce being somewhat underwhelming.
The paneer makhni and all the naan arrived after that. I say all the naan because each of the paneer dishes was ordered with one naan.
The palak paneer… did not arrive. It’s impossible to get anyone’s attention in there even though it’s a tiny place, because they are doing 6 other things in the back — pouring water, wiping dishes, answering the phone, etc. So 10 mins later when one of them walked by, I inquired where the dish was. “2-3 minutes”, we were assured. 10 mins later, I flagged down the same person — it will be out “momentarily”. The person eating paneer makhani was finished before the palak paneer ever came out, even after starting late and slowing down.
The palak paneer was good. The paneer makhani was too sweet. The biryani was… okay. No fried onions (birista) or other topping, some of the goat pieces were dried out as if the pot had been left open to the air, and the dish was very dry, though the spicing was good.
I don’t know if the NYT write-up hurt them, but the food wasn’t good enough to make up for the service fails. (They actually snapped at a customer who came in to sit down as we were leaving, and the “rush” that had lasted about 20 minutes was long gone by then.)
