Biryanish, Reading - food that lives on in the memory
Why British-Asians and those in the know travel far to taste Biryanish's kebabs and biryani
Desi Food Guide will be available to paid subscribers for £5/month or £50/year. This is the third of four posts that will be free to give you a taste of what’s to be served up every week. Read the first on NHS workers and Just A Bite, last week’s on Jay’s Budgens and a short introduction here.
My thoughts are with those affected by the Air India crash
“Any restaurant opens in the town, the Reading Chronicle covers it, but not my restaurant,” says Sarim Maqsood who runs Biryanish in the town.
They should. A few months ago I walked past Biryanish for the first time after visiting the Nag’s Head nearby. The Nag’s is a stellar pub that has won many awards but this establishment run by Sarim and his partner deserves equally lavish praise.
Now I’m guessing the Reading Chronicle have missed the chance to detail the finest restaurant/takeaway in their area because of the demographic of their staff (100% white) and the demographic of Biryanish - 95% desi.
Reading’s 35% BAME population, compared with the Reading Chronicle’s, says a lot about media diversity, or the lack thereof.
But then I wouldn’t have built a career of finding places like Biryanish and owners like Sarim. The food has British-Asians (and those in the know) travelling across the south to taste it.
West London, Oxford, Basingstoke, Bracknell and beyond.
There’s only a few tables and the queues are ridiculous - I say ‘queue’ but it’s more of a rabble. “People don’t line up in Asian culture,” laughs baseball cap-wearing Sarim. “We have limited seats so we actually started serving people in their cars.”
Biryanish, therefore, is possibly the only drive-through-ish-Indian in the country.
Why is it so good? In one word: heat. While nearly every Indian food outlet in Berkshire has dialled down the heat for a supposed ‘English’ palate, Biryanish has taken the chili to ‘desi’ levels. (We have this ‘English’ palate issue with beer: how many European lagers brewed under license to ‘British tastes’ are awful compared to their Czech or German cousins?)
Even the biryani is hot. And I should know - not because I travelled the length of the country trying desi pub food but because being half Malay chili was something fed to me from a very young age even more so than most British-Indians. Because of this (Indians assume Thai and Malays can take heat) they up the heat levels for me - but they can dial it down too.
The biryani might be hot but it’s also subtle, with caramelised onions - crispy not soggy - boned chicken with a fiery marinade - this is the place to take US tourists who still have lingering assumptions that Mexican food is hotter than Indian.
The kebabs are precisely marinated with - guess what? - chili prominent. My boneless chicken tikka kebab cooked on a skewer has the perfect amount of black, while the sheesh kebab was heavenly (and illicit as I’ve been told to not eat red meat).
“We visited Bangladeshi[-run] restaurants in the area and the spice and flavour profiles don’t match what we have back home,” says Sarim. “They call themselves Indian but their Bangladeshi.”
(Or Bangladeshi-British, with the emphasis on the latter.)
It also helps that Sarim’s wife (who didn’t want to be named in this article) is originally from Mumbai, while he’s from Lahore (his family are Punjabi Muslims). This means a lot of experimenting has taken place to get the outlet to the level it’s at now, especially if you factor in they’ve hired staff members that hail from different regions of India.
But heat isn’t a gimmick and the food is prepared with natural ingredients in the kitchen, with freshly pressed garlic and ginger rather than spooned out from a jar. The volumes are huge because they sell kebabs from £2, chicken biryani at £3 and the highest priced item is a curry for £8.
And it’s a success because of Sarim’s energy and drive: he started in catering seven or eight years ago as a Deliveroo driver on a bicycle and he was spurred into becoming a restaurateur by the most unlikely of people.
He cycled to a drop off in Tilehurst, on the outskirts of the town, on a hot summer day and was confronted by an abusive man. “I’m always in a happy mood,” he tells me, “but he talked to me so badly it broke my heart. He said to me: ‘look at you. You have no class.’
“He was out of control. Maybe he was drunk. I left and I was crying on the inside.”
This encounter could have led to long-term feelings of shame but Sarim wasn’t humiliated in the work he was doing; it wasn’t the right course for him. “I then got this idea in my mind,” he tells me.
He asked his wife to cook a pot of biryani, bought containers and then he set out to sell it. There was no grand plan, though, and he even begged Iceland to buy some. It wasn’t until a cornershop took pity on him that he managed to offload some.
“She’s a super chef,” Sarim says, “and I dropped all the boxes and I was very tired. It was a very tough time: I sat down, my phone rang and it was the shopkeeper. I thought ‘oh god, it’s a complaint.’”
The gaffer had in fact sold all four boxes in less than an hour and wanted more immediately. They cooked a new pot, Sarim sold more and a business came to be realised. They then sold enough that in 2021 they could open this humble outlet but it was quiet at the start with Sam having to harangue customers to come in.
“Nobody entered the shop,” he tells me, “and I became very ill because of the stress.”
But he stuck with it, either standing outside hawking or cycling on his bike dropping off deliveries. Then one day he was handing out fliers for breakfast - Biryanish is open most of the day - and someone called him ‘waiter’ from his car. He obliged by promptly bringing him breakfast and then this customer kept coming back.+
Sarim has had hundreds of interactions like this and over the years the word of mouth spread to make it the hustling business that I couldn’t ignore after my trip to the Nag’s Head. The first time I ate I knew I had to return even though Reading is a four-hour round-trip for me. It’s no bother to be honest as Sarim’s food lives on in my memory long after.
And he would love it if you visited and met him because he only has enthusiasm for making sure he has the best Indian food for such low prices.
“It was a fun time setting this place up. I loved it.”
92 Oxford Road, Reading RG1 7LJ
7am-12am, Mon-Sun