His second pick reaches further back in time. “The second place I always go to is the Grand Hotel, which is the oldest Irani café in Hyderabad, going back to 1935. Grand is a place I generally also go to for biryani and Irani chai.”
For Yunus, Haleem is inseparable from the institutions that have anchored Old City life for decades.
For Jonty Rajagopalan, who conducts culinary tours and history walks across Hyderabad and knows its contours intimately, the approach is slightly different. Jonty is a vegetarian, something you might never guess if you’ve walked through the city’s food lanes with her. She knows what is good where, and her recommendations are precise.
“I’m a vegetarian, but the interesting thing for me is that there are different kinds of haleem, and everyone ends up doing this kind of haleem hopping in the Old City,” she says. “Each year there tend to be some stalls which are more favoured than the others. But amongst all of them, the Pista House haleem is the best one. They have stalls all over the city, so accessibility-wise it’s great.”
Ramzan nights around Charminar draw crowds for food, prayer and late-night marketsSuri Vasireddy
She also points to Shah Ghouse for dependable quality, and to Sarvi Bakery, where “they add more dry fruits and it’s supposed to be like the Irani version of haleem.”
What she finds most heartening, however, is range. “Funnily enough, there are places in the Old City which also do vegetarian haleem with lentils and oats mixed together. So it’s very heartening to know that even people like me who don’t eat meat can get a version of haleem.”
For chef Ruby Islam, Hyderabad-based pastry chef, chocolatier and chief of product at Manam Chocolate, Ramzan in the city is similarly incomplete without haleem.
