Delhiwale: A-One for veg biryani

In Delhi, the popularity of "A-One" eateries and the rise of vegetarian biryani challenge traditional definitions of cuisine and language.

Sometimes, an ordinary sight is profoundly telling. This overcast noon, a food vendor is dragging his pushcart along a central Delhi avenue.

The words painted on the trolley—A-One Veg Biryani—inadvertently summon attention to two contemporary trends. (HT)

The words painted on the cart—A-One Veg Biryani—inadvertently summon attention to two contemporary trends. The first is about the city’s fetish for a particular lingual expression. The other is the increasing spread of a dish variety that, some argue, violates the essential tenets of that dish’s mother recipe.

Let’s first discuss the matter of A-One.

The Oxford dictionary explains it as a colloquial for describing something as “excellent,” or “first rate.”

Whilst biryani, the dictionary explains, is “an originally Indian dish made with highly seasoned rice, and meat or fish, etc.”

And here, on the busy road, is our “Bajrangi Veg Biryani Wala”—see photo. Citizen Anarjeet Kumar Mahto is hawking a version of biryani that not only defies the dictionary definition, but is A-One at that.

Indeed, the city is swarming with A-Ones, so much so that a few years ago, this page was obliged to devote a dispatch on this theme.

There is the A-One Hotel in Sunder Nagri, A One Cafe and Nepali kitchen in Paharganj, A-One Mens Saloon in Preet Vihar, A-One Store in Jorbagh Market, A-One Public School in Gurugram’s Sheetla Colony, A-One fruit vendor in Karkardooma, A-One Chicken Corner in Kamla Nagar, A-One Cafe in Pitampura, A-One International Public School in Noida’s Nithari…

As for veg biryani, the name alone agitates the purists. Those stiff-necked folks struggle to accept the world with all its queer realities, including this alternative rice dish that has nothing non-veg about it, yet identifies itself as biryani.

Whatever, over the recent years, the dish has fanned out widely across the national capital region. Take a veg biryani food cart in Gurugram’s Sector 6. The vendor cooks the rice the biryani way, but substitutes the meat with soybean chunks, along with seasonal subzis and paneer.

Meanwhile, Dilli’s A-One field guide is continuing to unspool… A-One PG Hostel in Gurugram’s Sector 22, A-One lingerie store in GK-1, A-One Machinery Equipment in Faridabad, A-One Makhan Wale Aloo Parathe cart in Ghaziabad’s Vaishali, A-One Hospital in Paschim Vihar, A-One Jewellers in Old Delhi’s Chitli Qabar… talking of Old Delhi, its iconic non-veg eateries too condescend to serve a vegetarian version of the rice dish—it is called not “veg biryani”, but “veg pulao”.

However, a Connaught Place restaurant, which bears the word “biryani” in its name, unhesitatingly calls its numerous veg rice offerings as paneer dum biryani, soya chaap dum biryani, kathal dum biryani and Veg Hyderabadi dum biryani.

By now, Anarjeet Kumar Mahto has parked his cart by the pave, ready to launch the lunch hour rush with his A-One veg biryani, rich in “matar, paneer, soybean se bharpoor.”