its a dish that incites love and war a dish that can be anointed indias national dish given how pervasive it is and how reflective of a country where inventiveness is a national trait the biryani is of course an innovation created as the subcontinents cooks tweaked and refined the central asian pulao but having established itself as a culinary superstar in different regions where variations evoke extreme passions the biryanis pot is bubbling once moreas more and more restaurant chains seek to mcdonaldise the dish and feed the growing appetite for rice with spice theres a danger that the countrys rich and nuanced regional traditions may get obliviated quick and cheap takeaways may feed a need but a generation of millennials exposed to only these may grow up believing that the indiscriminate masala rice and meat or veggies or soya chunks meal they are forking up is the real mccoy after all for a majority cardboard pizza or pasta in red and white maidaladen sauce is italian and supermarket sushi dunked in soy is japanese still these are aspirational foreign cuisines and you could overlook the bastardisationfor a complex dish like biryani representative of the depth and diversity of indias food culture to be reduced to its lowest common denominator is rather inexplicable especially when it has been cooked in homes and singledish shops for centuries and its consumers have been thought to be discerning regardless of the wealth they possesswhich is the best biryani its a question bound to bring tempers to a boil the refined restrainedonspicing pucci avadhi biryani has always battled it with its deccani counterpart hyderabads bolder kachchi biryani sometimes labelled a pulao by champions of lucknow because rice and meat are cooked together in the same pot a biryani by definition is a layered dish rice and meat are cooked separately then layered and cooked on dum in the avadhi versionthe calcutta biryani holds up its distinct identity with potatoes and eggs intact there is the ambur biryani of the south made famous ostensibly by a former cook of the arcot royals who opened a shop in the small town of ambur and had loyalists and imitators queuing up there are the noncourtly varieties such as from northern keralas moplah community showing off spice and dried fruit bounty as well as connections brought by ancient trade and there are hyperlocal versions like dindigul biryani which loyalists say is distinctive not only because of its shortgrained rice but the very water its cooked in from a local lakethis dum diversity is one reason why local biryani joints have never really been able to establish largescale presence in other parts of the country in kolkata where small biryani shops sprout in every lane brands like arsalan and aminia have been expanding but only within the city and areas in bengal hyderabads famous paradise is trying to go national but yet to replicate its deccan success all over dindiguls best known thalapakatti is a phenomenon