Hyderabadi House

Rating: 3

We ate dinner here in October 2024.

Chicken biryani
Paneer butter masala
Plain naan
Butter naan

Is there a more universal human desire than to innovate? To push the boundaries of what is possible? Da Vinci, Newton, Turing, and the dude at Hyderabadi House who thought to put the biryani in a bucket. Visionaries.

That’s right. Biryani. In a bucket. Mind blown. And while 1L of biryani was too much for us, don’t worry, it comes with a lid so you can just take it away. And they also do a 5L bucket for the true Baron Harkonnen tier gluttons amongst us. However you’ll just be pulling even more bits of chicken bone out of your teeth if you go with that option, there was far too much of that for us in just the 1L bucket, which really detracted from the experience. It came with two sauces, one of which was really just yoghurt that had been thinned right down, and the other of which was this lovely green mixture of flavours that we couldn’t name.

Hyderabadi House was the opposite of most Indian restaurants in that they had only a small selection of curries and a large selection of biryanis. While there weren’t many to choose from, the paneer butter masala was really nice. Despite the word butter it wasn’t like a food court butter chicken sauce in any way. It was darker, very aromatic, and much more flavourful. It also had a tonne of oil on the top which we could have done without, but the paneer itself was top notch. Shout out to the naans too. For a plain and a butter naan, they couldn’t have done more. Not too greasy, neither too thin and crisp, nor too doughy and soft. Juuuuuuust right. It was all hot and fresh too, although there was a bit of a gap between the biryani and the curry/naan. This doesn’t bother us, share-masters that we are, but if you were on a date and waiting politely for the other meal to arrive, you might be a bit pissed.

Last time we were in this building, September 2022 this was a different Indian restaurant called Curry Leaf. The only thing notable about them then was the stiff breeze coming through a dodgy window, which we are pleased to report has been fixed. We think this is probably a whole different restaurant, as opposed to a sneaky rebrand to try to trick customers, as the entire menu is so different and Hyderabadi House had a second location in Lower Hutt. We’d say the transition was an upgrade.