A foodie friend from Bhopal sent a message the other day. Had we tried ordering food from Taamonline, he wanted to know. Nice, genuine biryani, he said. And I swung into action.
The moment I hear the word biryani I get activated, quite like Pavlov and dog. For someone who is essentially a wheat eater, I can’t quite understand this great love I have for biryanis. But as I have said before, I truly enjoy this rice-and-meat dish — irrespective of where it is from. I love the spiciness of the Hyderabadi biryani, the richness of the Awadhi one, the more rustic taste of the Delhi version, the juicy potato in the Calcutta dish and the variations that you find in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. I don’t even mind the pickled taste of the Moradabadi biryani.
So, of course, I went online to get to know more about Ta’am.
It turned out that it is a service which provides biryanis, kormas, kababs and other such delicious dishes in kilos.
Diversity on table
But a sampler came home, and I tried out quite a few of the dishes — and had a great meal, indeed.
There was quite a spread — biryani, korma, kababs, baghare baigan, meethi roti and sewain. I think I enjoyed the lamb shami kababs the most — they were soft, the meat was deliciously tender and lightly spiced, and what I really liked was that they were not thick and chunky, as kababs often are, but thin, like home-cooked kababs. The kababs had been made with beaten meat and not minced meat, so they were exceptionally tasty. I ate a piece with a small chunk of the meethi roti, and found they complemented each other rather well.
Kababs
The Lucknowi biryani was good, too. The rice was long-grained, and the meat pieces were well cooked. It was rightly spiced — neither too much, nor too little.
Nawabi dish
The mildly sweet taste of the Hyderabadi dish, baghare baigan, was delightful. The tamarind in it gave it the tart edge that it needed. But, somehow, the korma didn’t work for me. I found the gravy too runny and the meat a little insipid. The Muzaffar sewain (₹300 a box — 450g and serves 7-8 people), on the other hand, was superb, and gave a pleasantly sweet end to what was a veritable feast.
The rates are in kilos. The Lucknowi mutton biryani — which serves 5-6 people is for ₹1400 a kilo, the chicken biryani for ₹1200 a kilo. Hyderabadi mutton biryani is for ₹1600 a kilo and chicken biryani ₹1400 a kilo. The mutton qorma, which serves 10, is for ₹1800 a kilo. A plate of mutton shami kababs — one kilo with 40 pieces — costs ₹1500. The baghare baigan is for ₹1000 a kilo and serves 10, says the rate card.
Ta’am is an online platform run by Asra Ahmad. It takes orders on phone and online. The phone numbers are 8586030554 and 9953170590. The email id is order@taamonline.com, and the website is www.taamonline.com. You have to order your food at least a day in advance, and they take delivery charges as applicable. The bawarchis of Ta’am have been trained by the family, and a cook is there from Hyderabad as well.
My friend from Bhopal was not wrong. You won’t be disappointed, he had said. And I certainly wasn’t.
