The biryani at Kayees Rahmathulla Cafe comes with a spoon, but I’m pretty sure that’s just for serving. If I really wanted to eat it the right way, I should have been eating it with my hands — that’s what everyone around me was doing.
Aside from the fact that I wasn’t sure how clean my hands were after sightseeing around Fort Kochi all morning, I didn’t particularly feel like getting my hands super greasy. So yeah, I did the clueless tourist thing and just ate it with the spoon.
They have two types of biryani on the menu: chicken and mutton (or at least I think that’s the case; as soon as I walked in, I was asked if I wanted mutton or chicken biryani, and that was that). I went with mutton, because I have a hard time saying no to mutton whenever that’s an option.
It was so, so good. It was easily the best biryani I’ve ever had.
The rice was perfectly fluffy, nicely spiced, and infused with a really satisfying meaty flavour. It comes with a few condiments on side — a chili sauce, a super flavourful date chutney, pickled onions and tomatoes, and a crispy papadum.
The condiments really put this over the top. The chili adds a nice level of spice, and the chutney has an intensely savoury flavour that really kicks things up. The papadum adds some nice pops of crispiness, and even the onions were great — they’re pickled, so they don’t really have that acrid raw onion flavour. They just bring a nice vinegary zinginess that does a great job of cutting through the richness of the rice and the meat.
And the mutton was bonkers — it was tender enough that I was easily able to cut through it with a spoon, but not so tender that it felt like mush. It was perfect.
Location: Gujarati Rd, Near Gujarati Temple, Mattancherry, Kochi, Kerala 682002, India
How to find it: The sign is in English, so it’s pretty easy to find.