The Man Who Cooks Biryani for 300 People on the Mumbai Streets

[food sizzling] [car horn honking]

Oh my god, we're in Bombay,

one of the greatest food cities on the planet,

one of the most densely populated places.

And here we're in Dharavi

where there's more than 1 million people per square mile.

Hotel Theresa, where the chef here is gonna feed 300 people

in two hours, making 80 pounds of biryani

in that big pot over there.

All right, this is the ceremonial lighting of the fire.

This is sesame oil. Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, this is fantastic.

I've never seen it done with sesame oil before.

Pure cows milk ghee, in addition to the sesame oil.

[jar banging pot] That sesame oil's gonna give

a beautiful nuttiness to the biryani.

And there's the masala.

You've got cinnamon, really classic.

You've got your bay leaves, really classic.

This is rock lichen, dagad phool.

Dagad phool. That's amazing.

Dagad phool means stone flower,

literally you scrape off rocks.

And the reason the spices are whole is

because it's gonna flavor the oil,

and the oil is gonna transport

that flavor into the rice, into the biryani.

He's tempering the spices in the oil,

not using powders but whole spices,

so that the oil is flavored with the aromatics.

I mean, it's a really brilliant technique.

There can be a dry masala and a wet masala.

A dry masala is a collection of spices

that are powdered usually.

And then a wet masala is when those spices are cooked

with onions, ginger, garlic, tomatoes, in lots of oil.

Five gallons of onions, green chilies.

He's not gonna stop stirring for about 45 minutes,

you don't want the onions to burn.

The idea is to reduce the onions, get rid of all the water.

The flavor of a biryani is the frying of the onions.

Most people seem to think that it's the meat and the masala,

but it's really those caramelized onions

that are sweet flecked throughout the biryani

that's gonna give the flavor.

Don't skimp on the onions.

It's 9:30 in the morning right now.

He'll probably start serving around 11.

As you can see, we're on the street,

which is the only place it makes sense

to cook something of this volume.

There's no kitchen that can handle something this size.

And it's also an advertisement for everybody going by.

I would never walk in a restaurant like this

if I didn't see what they were cooking up front.

If they were cooking in the back,

that would sketch me the [bleep] out.

But cooking in the front,

I get to see, oh yeah, that looks good, we're going in.

The chef moved here from Tamil Nadu 15 years ago.

When he first started, he had a tiny little tea stall,

and he started doing a little lunch service

on a bench next to his tea stall.

Let me show you, and you can see the color.

Now you got that browning, the caramelization.

It's gonna continue cooking,

but he's ready now to put the ginger garlic paste in.

And this is the art,

where both of these are gonna cook together,

where it gets to the final product.

[food sizzling]

There's an alchemy to ginger garlic paste

that is quite unique.

If it doesn't get on your clothes. [laughs]

Garlic by itself burns,

ginger by itself gets really fibrous,

but we mix them both together in a 50-50 paste,

just grind ginger and garlic together and add it,

it creates this incredible caramelized fond without burning.

You can see the hotspot on the pot is in the middle.

And what chef is doing right now

is constantly bringing the paste over the hotspot,

cooking it, and then taking it to the side.

Given the size of the pot, he knows you can't get

an equal amount of heat on the bottom, whew.

You cannot shortcut this process.

The longer you cook it, the more flavor you're building.

That's about two gallons of mint.

So they get this beautiful aromatics from the mint,

and cilantro, copious amount cilantro.

The flavor of cilantro is actually in the stem.

And it doesn't look cool in a salad,

but when you putting into a great curry like this,

you wanna make sure you get the stem in it.

There's intense flavor in the stem.

So roughly two kilos,

about four and a half pounds of yogurt went in.

It essentially provides a base for the rest of the onions

to continue cooking without drying out.

It adds acidity to the dish.

Crushed tomatoes, whole tomatoes,

tomato, the single most important ingredient

that was brought to India by colonialism.

And it's become an essential part of Indian cuisine.

So this is what they called rock salt.

It's not refined, it's not the fine table salt.

And there's no measuring spoon here.

I mean, there's no measuring cup.

The guy just knows exactly,

he's been doing this for 15 years,

he knows exactly how much salt goes in here.

[Saifi speaking in foreign language]

This is really cool, he's keeping track of the colors.

This is a five-color biryani,

and that's part of his cooking.

So there's a visual element to this

that is also hugely important

to the way this dish is constructed.

It's all about layers.

There it is, the fifth color.

This biryani masala is his,

he calls it a Tamil Nadu biryani masala.

And the basic ingredients are red chili powder,

as you can see from the color,

cumin powder, jeera, roasted first, turmeric.

It's got fennel seed powder.

And I guarantee you, he's holding back two

or three items from that masala from us,

'cause he's not gonna give all the secrets away.

The chicken, this dish is traditionally made

with either chicken or with goat meat.

The chicken's been very lightly marinated

in red chili powder and turmeric,

both adding flavor to the chicken.

[Saifi speaking in foreign language]

[Meherwan speaking in foreign language]

[Saifi speaking in foreign language]

This may sound a little strange to the American mind,

but when you're cooking on the street, it's really important

to make sure everybody here comes back to eat another day.

[Saifi laughs]

My mouth is watering, his mouth is watering

'cause we're about to put lemon juice,

fresh squeezed, into this.

He was careful to not put it too early,

'cause he doesn't wanna,

we call it fritana, tear, tear the masala.

Essentially, the yogurt might curdle.

So he is gonna put that in

and that's gonna take that acidity,

the acid level in the dish to the next level.

So Chef Subbudi has put about four gallons,

maybe five gallons of hot water.

It's really important to put hot water in here

so that you don't slow down the cooking process,

you don't retard the cooking process.

This is the water in which the rice is gonna steam,

and cook, and fluff up, and turn into the biryani.

Basmati rice, beautiful long rain rice,

it's been soaked for probably an hour,

hour and a half it's been soaked.

[Saifi speaking in foreign language]

[Meherwan speaking in foreign language]

[Saifi speaking in foreign language]

[Meherwan] No salt, no lemon juice,

just straight soaked rice.

[Saifi speaking in foreign language]

45 pounds of rice.

This particular biryani rice, it's fragrant,

and each grain is separate

and gets really long as you cook it,

which is really an essential characteristic

of a good biryani.

My mom's side of the family grew rice in Dehradun,

I know my basmati.

I'm excited to see what this is gonna look like.

To simplify this, all of that flavor,

everything that's in the water,

is gonna be absorbed into the rice,

and that's what's gonna give it its signature flavor.

It is such an incredible evolution of idea,

technique, flavor, layering.

I mean, humanity's greatest achievement, the biryani.

Ghee, with raisins and cashews cooked in the ghee,

two things are happening.

The raisins and the cashews obviously have the flavor

of the ghee in them, and the ghee has the flavors

of the nuttiness of the raisins and the cashews.

These are expensive ingredients.

How do you maximize the flavor of them in the whole dish?

You take a little bit, cook it in a lot of ghee,

and you'll get that flavor infused in the whole dish.

These banana leaves are gonna go on top of the rice,

to kind of, essentially,

both help create the dum on the inside

and also give an incredible flavor

from the oils in the banana leaf to the rice.

This is unique, I've never seen this before.

The front of the banana leaf is

where the oils will release from,

so that's the part that he's putting down.

Over here, follow me, come on over.

So you can see here, he's getting the dough ready

to form a seal around the biryani.

He's making a wet dough.

He's gonna make a rope out of the dough.

Use the rope around the lip of the biryani bowl,

put the lid on it, creating a seal,

and cooking the biryani under pressure.

So this is India's Instant Pot,

going back a couple thousand years.

It's a team effort.

The lid goes on, da bow, press it down,

it's gonna get pressed.

You're gonna create an airtight seal.

Thank you. Oh wow, check this out.

This lid has been in use for 15 years.

You can see the holes where the lid's cracked through,

and they're putting dough to seal the holes

so that none of the steam escapes.

That's not a biryani technique,

that's just what we call a jugaad,

they're MacGyvering this one.

Jugaad basically means to MacGyver something.

This country's built on jugaad.

This is the magic. [coconuts clattering]

He gets these from Tamil Nadu, from his home state.

You can tell they're like literally freshly grated.

To create the dum, to create the pressure,

you need heat from the bottom and heat from the top.

He could've used anything, he could have used charcoal,

he could have used fence posts, he could have used crates.

But he's using the coconut

because this symbolizes where he's from,

and also the man's a bit of a showman,

if you haven't told by now, and it gets all the punters in,

all the crowds gonna come in 'cause they see this happening.

When he lights this sucker up, it's his smoke signal

that biryani is on the fire,

and it's time to start lining up.

'Cause it's literally cooking from the top,

cooking from the bottom, creating pressure,

and the pressure builds inside

until the rice steams and becomes fluffy.

The way he described it, once this is lit,

don't poke at it, don't peek at it,

don't lift it up to see what's happening,

don't [bleep] with it.

When it's ready, it'll unfold like a flower,

his words, not mine.

The gentleman over here is making papadums,

which is an accompaniment

to almost every South Indian based rice dish.

It's a little crunchy cracker.

It puffs up like a shrimp cracker.

It's made out of compressed dal, or in this case urad dal.

And it's just a crunchy, delicious little snack.

Think of it as the Indian potato chip.

We're in the slum, Dharavi, the largest slum in the world.

And most people think of a slum and they think of squalor.

This is where migrant workers that came to Bombay

essentially started squatting on open fields

that were near the city, and it turned into a city.

It's a hub of economic activity,

and it's one of the most diverse parts of any city.

It's really important to not think of a slum

as squalor or abject poverty.

Yes, there's parts of that too, but it's also just a city.

A restaurant like this is a community center,

especially a good one.

While we've been in here,

I've seen the local cops come and eat and leave.

Serves breakfast for the early worker on their way in.

The dough is fully cooked,

and as it cooks, it releases from the top,

so they don't have to break the seal.

Now they just lift it up,

'cause all the pressure's dissipated, wow.

God, the aroma is ridiculous.

You see how each grain of rice is sort of standing up.

That's a visual indication that the rice is cooked.

It's not laying flat.

They're all sort of like poking up a little bit.

You can actually also see tiny holes

where little steam tunnels have formed in a few places,

letting you know that the steam's been able

to go all the way through.

[Meherwan speaking in foreign language]

[Saifi speaking in foreign language]

Exactly. Amazing.

And they're ready for service.

Most of the street food are coupon systems,

you go and you buy a coupon,

'cause the money guy's always different

from the guy that's handing you the food.

The money guy's usually the owner of the business.

[Meherwan speaking in foreign language]

[owner speaking in foreign language]

[Meherwan speaking in foreign language]

170 rupees, that's $2, just barely.

I had no idea this was happening.

Every order of biryani is gonna come

with a piece of fried chicken also.

Man, this is some serious value for money.

All for, oh, and then don't forget the eggs.

One leg piece, one egg, all for $2.

I mean, this smells incredible. I can't wait.

This is way more epic than I thought it would be.

Thank you.

[paper rustling] [people speaking faintly]

[Meherwan speaking in foreign language]

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Look at it, hot and ready to go.

Jesus Christ it's, oh man, oh my god.

The banana leaf aromatics just hits you right off the top.

Let's go eat. Look at the size of this.

Oh my god. [gong bonging]

Just the aromatics coming off of this are incredible.

I get the banana leaf.

It's really just adding a insane layer of just aroma

over and above the masala in here.

You got the chicken that's been cooked inside.

And then as if that's not enough, you got the boiled egg,

which is also a very Hyderabadi-style biryani.

It comes with the boiled egg.

And then, just for S and Gs,

a whole piece of fried chicken to go with it.

I'm gonna go in, I'm going in.

[bell ringing]

This is ridiculous. This is ridiculous.

It's so freaking good. It's kind of mad.

This is last meal biryani.

Every grain of rice is still separate.

It's covered in the masala,

but it's still distinctly separate.

The perfect bite, break the egg up, mix it in,

and then break off some of this.

The fried chicken is done perfectly.

[car horn honking]

This is kind of overwhelming,

to watch this come together in the street

for 300 to 400 people, and for it to taste this good.

I mean, this is kinda what street food is all about.

It's just, I mean, my hair's standing on end.

This is how good this is.

This is a highly personal story for Saifi.

He arrived in Bombay and slept, for the first three years,

in the railroad station.

He now employs 15 people,

cares about his community, gives food back.

And all of that makes every bite taste more powerful

because I know what went into making this.

I'm sort of getting a little choked up here,

just thinking of what this man went through

to put this plate of food in front of me right now.

There is no street food in Bombay

if it wasn't for the people and their stories behind it.

The street, they say, is the great unifier.

This is a supreme example

of how the street can unify everything, it's incredible.

So this is my favorite part. [Saifi laughing]

Not only is this man a chef,

he plays a villain in Tamil movies,

one of the largest movie industries in India.

[Meherwan speaking in foreign language]

[Saifi speaking in foreign language]