Savor Scout › Food guides › Biryani
How to find good biryani
Biryani is rice and meat cooked together in layers, sealed and slow-steamed — not curry stirred into rice. Hyderabadi, Lucknowi, Kolkata, Karachi and South Indian styles all differ, and good restaurants are proud of theirs.
What separates a good one from a bad one
- Dum cooking — Sealed pot, slow steam. The rice absorbs the meat's flavour and the aroma hits when it opens.
- Long, separate grains — Aged basmati that stays whole and distinct, with streaks of colour from saffron or spices.
- Meat cooked through the rice — Tender, bone-in goat or chicken. Not cubes added at the end.
- Fragrance — Saffron, rosewater, kewra, fried onions and whole spices.
- Raita and salan on the side — Cooling yoghurt and a chilli-peanut gravy (mirchi ka salan) at Hyderabadi places.
What to order
- Hyderabadi goat dum biryani — The famous style.
- Chicken biryani — A good test of the kitchen.
- Kolkata biryani — With potato and egg, if offered.
- Mirchi ka salan — Chilli gravy on the side.
- Double ka meetha — Bread pudding to finish.
Where to find Biryani
Biryani is mostly found at Indian restaurants, so that is where to look. Open listings put 8,675 of them across the US, and these are the cities and campuses with the most.
Cities with the most
New York, NY 312 Chicago, IL 126 San Francisco, CA 103 Sunnyvale, CA 77 Los Angeles, CA 77 Seattle, WA 72 San Jose, CA 72 Jersey City, NJ 72
Campuses with the most within a mile
New School University 99 Baruch 96 The Graduate Center 94 FIT 80 Touro University 79 NYU 77
A few to start with
- Indian Express — New York, NY
18 Murray St, New York - Tikka N Curry — Chicago, IL
400 S Financial Pl, Chicago - Spice of America — San Francisco, CA
1655 Market St, San Francisco - Pani Puri Company — Sunnyvale, CA
620 Hollenbeck Ave, Sunnyvale - BADMAASH Downtown LA — Los Angeles, CA
108 W 2nd St, Los Angeles - Cafe Zum Zum — Seattle, WA
823 3rd Ave, Seattle
Counts are listings in Overture Maps open data (September 2026), counted by the town in each address. Independent places only in the examples above, and they are a starting point rather than a ranking.
How Savor Scout looks for it
The search reads for dum, Hyderabadi, goat and biryani-specific reviews, and favours places that specialise in biryani over menus where it appears as one rice dish among many.
Looking in a particular city?
Each of these opens Savor Scout with the location already set, so you can say what you want and it searches from there. It covers 1,000 US cities in total — these are simply the largest.
- New York, NY
- Los Angeles, CA
- Chicago, IL
- Houston, TX
- Philadelphia, PA
- Phoenix, AZ
- San Antonio, TX
- San Diego, CA
- Dallas, TX
- San Jose, CA
- Austin, TX
- Indianapolis, IN
- Jacksonville, FL
- San Francisco, CA
- Columbus, OH
- Charlotte, NC
- Fort Worth, TX
- Detroit, MI
- El Paso, TX
- Memphis, TN
- Seattle, WA
- Denver, CO
- Washington, DC
- Boston, MA
- Nashville, TN
- Baltimore, MD
- Oklahoma City, OK
- Louisville, KY
- Portland, OR
- Las Vegas, NV
- Milwaukee, WI
- Albuquerque, NM
- Tucson, AZ
- Fresno, CA
- Sacramento, CA
- Long Beach, CA
- Kansas City, MO
- Mesa, AZ
- Virginia Beach, VA
- Atlanta, GA
- Colorado Springs, CO
- Omaha, NE
- Raleigh, NC
- Miami, FL
- Oakland, CA
- Minneapolis, MN
- Tulsa, OK
- Cleveland, OH
- Wichita, KS
- Arlington, TX
- New Orleans, LA
- Bakersfield, CA
- Tampa, FL
- Honolulu, HI
- Aurora, CO
- Anaheim, CA
- Santa Ana, CA
- St. Louis, MO
- Riverside, CA
- Corpus Christi, TX
Related food guides
Indian food, Pakistani food, curry
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