With a simple butter chicken set at a food court now costing upwards of $20, it is hard to imagine paying less than that for an all-you-can-eat Indian dinner buffet.
But $19.99 is what you’d pay at Biryaniwala Dominion Road to have an unlimited spread that offers a delightful kaleidoscope of spice, rice, and flavours.
The sumptuous spread includes a selection of lamb, chicken or vegetarian biryani, chicken and vegetable starters, bone-in lamb and chicken curries, South Indian vegetable curry, freshly baked tandoori naan and sweet treats.
The buffet's highlight is Biryaniwala’s lamb biryani, where aromatic-flavoured basmati rice is layered with tender braised lamb shank.
Biryaniwala’s buffet dinner will launch early next month and will be available every Wednesday and Thursday evening.
Biryaniwala owner Sreeman Myadam said the buffet was “not aimed at making a profit” but rather to “get people to fall in love with our food”.
“We specialize in South Indian-style food, and our curries are very different to butter chicken which many Kiwis tend to associate Indian curries with,” Sreeman said.
“So we thought the best way to get people tasting our food is to offer a buffet with our signature dishes, and to make it cheap so it will be accessible to more people.”
Biryani, the eatery’s signature dish, is a Mughal dish where every grain of rice is infused with spices, and is first fried with ghee and spices such as cinnamon, ginger, saffron and garlic.
It is then cooked with the meat - like chicken or lamb - that are layered together and cooked slowly in a sealed pot, trapping the steam to create the aromatic and flavourful dish.
Biryaniwala’s dinner buffet will be available every Wednesday and Thursday for a limited time from 5 March from 6pm to 11pm.
BIRYANIWALA DOMINION ROAD
1222 Dominion Road, Mount Roskill, Auckland. Ph 09 277 5678
