The Biryani King of India!

Delhi Darbars JAFFERBHI MANSURI makes the best Biryani in Bombay. He is one restaurateur who can cook every item of food on the menus of his popular Mughlai eateries, "You must know and love food to be able to serve food"

(PRWEB) December 22, 2003 --JAFFERBHAL Mansuri is known in gourmet circles as the Biryani King of Bombay. No restaurateur serves better biryani than him. But dont take my word for it. Go to his Delhi Darbar Restaurant and see for yourself. Jafferbhai has four in Bombay. The original Delhi Darbar is at Grant Road corner on the fringes of the citys notorious red light area and in between some of the sleaziest cinema house you will ever come across. All of Bombays taxi-drivers, and Victoria-wall abs, know the restaurant. They are forever taking the Arab guests of Taj and Oberoi there for dinner. The other Delhi Darbars are at Coloba, Dongri, and in suburban Versova.

You may eat at any one of them; the biryani will taste the same, on that you may take my word. Thats because jafferbhai has trained all the cooks himself. They are not professional who have passed out of catering colleges but men whose families have been in his employ for years. He takes them into his services, trains them in the art of Mughlai cooking, and then gives them his secret formula" to make biryani. However, the formula works only in a Delhi Darbar Restaurant. Cooks who have left and tried to repeat his success outside have failed miserably, jafferbhai told me somewhat gleefully.

I tried asking him what the biryani formula was over lunch at the Delhi Darbar in Grant Road. But jafferbhai, who must have been asked this question many times before, ignored me. Enjoy the biryani, instead," he ordered, and heaped another big spoonful onto my plate. He is that kind of man. He talks little. And he has made it his lifes mission to entertain and feed the citizens of Bombay, all his friends, with good food. Only when you can be generous and large-hearted enough towards others with food will you really enjoy eating yourself," he said to me now, signaling to a waiter to fetch us more biryani. After this, we were to drive over to his residence nearby and meet jafferbhais family of 11.

When you eat with him, the biryani is served separately, meaning, the yellow Basmati rice, brand 505 from Dehrabun,is given to you minus the meat and birasta of burnt, brown onion strands.(And the best biryani is always meat, remember that!) You take the meat, which comes in another plate, thick with masala, and mix it in your rice. Then you sprinkle the barista over it. That is the way jafferbahi likes to eat his biryani. In another quarte-plate, you will be served the pyaaz: freshly cut onion rings and quarters of green lime. Queeze a little lime onto the onions, the rest onto your biryani, it adds a zing to the dish. And eat with your fingers, feel the texture of the meat, it is the softest, most succulent you will get in Bombay. Jafferbhai shops for it himself, selecting only the best cuts of kid goat to go into his biryani.

Delhi Darbar is over 50 years old. It was originally a chai-coffee-lassi-mithai shop at Grant Road owned by a businessman named Latifulla. In 1949, jafferbahis father Gulam Mohammed, a Mulghlai food caterer, went into partnership with Latifulla went to settle down in Pakistan and Gulam Mohammed passed away in 1952, leaving his three sons, jaffer,Shafi and Iqbal, to look after Delhi Darbar, jafferbhai the eldest, was 16, and studying in K.C.College. His mother never let him complete his educations. Start learning how to make biryanis and korms, instead, thats your business," she advised him. And that was his beginning as a restaurateur.

Delhi Darbar till then was still not a restaurant. It continued to sell chai, coffee, mithai and lassi. And it did not whilly belong to jafferbhais family too. They acquired it in 1964, Jafferbhai, with great enterprise, started the food service in 1973.By then he had mastered Mughlai cooking completely. Not just biryanis and kormas, as his mother had suggested. His instructor was an old family retainer. From Ratnagiri, a trusted cook if his fathers who had been running the familys catering business for over 50 years. This man, Yakub Khan, trained jafferbahi to cook all Kinds of North Indian food, but especially the Mughlai cuisines of Delhi and Lucknow.and he encouraged jafferbahi to specialize in making an authentic biryani from scratch. Today, jafferbahi children swear by his biryani.

His cooking style is so distinctive," says his eldest son Mazhar, that we can taste a biryani and tell if Daddy has made it." But biryani is not all that they like Daddy" to cook. Jafferbahi can cook the entire Delhi Darbar menus, right unto the last item in desserts, which is caramel custard. And there are times in his catering business when he personally turns out in the Kitchen to help in the cooking if there is a big order. At his posh home in Bombays Agripada area, jafferbahi often cooks for wife Taslima and his seven children and there Grandchildren. But this food is unlike his Delhi Darbar ka khass khana. He goes easy on the oil and spices because this is for the gharwale. He makes the best dal-gosht and korma in town," reveals jafferbahi eldest daughter Rizwana.

Somewhat embarrassed by all the fuss his family is making of his cooking, jafferbahi explains his expertise in the kitchen. "My mother always told me that if I know how to cook, my gaadi will run, nobody will be able to get ahead of me." This is how he able to get ahead of me. This is how he talks, in a simple, everyday manner. And he is a simple man, dressed in white kurta-pyjama. Polished glassers, a mobile phone in hand that keeps constantly beeping. He loves to talk about food and cooking. And he loves to have his family about him. The wife and daughters and sevants are onpins when they cook at home and jafferbahi id dining with them. Hes critical. And hes particular. If the food is not unto his mark, he will reject it.

And then he will roll up his immaculate kurta sleeves and go into the kitchen to show them how its done! I ask daughter Rizwana what happens when the family goes out for dinner. Does jafferbahi like any cuisine other than Delhi Darbars food? Does the enjoy Chinese? Or Thai, perhaps? He loves biryani," she says with finality and a giggle. "But when we travel abroad, he will eat out in Indian restaurants, and he is generally recognized by the owners or the chefs there. If he knows them well, or if they are close to him, Daddy will tell them if the food is good or bad." In Bombay, naturally, jafferbahi favorite eating out places are his Delhi Darbar restaurants. He spends at least an hour with each of them Daly. And he tastes the food at each restaurant that is prepared and ready. That way the kitchen staffs are always on their toes. They never know when the boss will make a check.

Jafferbahi explains the USP of Delhi Darbar, his success story so to say. If the quality, Quantity and price are correct, the service is perfect, and all these four customers will go home satisfied with their dining experience. What set Delhi Darbar's food apart from the other Mughlai specialty restaurants in Bombay, II asked hoping to discover the mans trade secret. Theres not much difference in rate between us and the common restaurants," he revealed, But out quality is a byword in the restaurant business." And for this, again, I can vouch. Jafferbahi is a bit of a wizard at the purchasing of ingredients as well. He can look at a goat and tell how much meat it will yield when it is cut and cooked. And he orders only the best chicken, mutton, rice and oil for his business. He has fixed suppliers, all of them have become multi-millionaires just but supplying to jafferbahi, and he is happy with them.

He opened his second Delhi Darbar restaurant in 1976 .This one was at Colaba and meant more for the international clientle that, perhaps, might not find its way to the Grant Road restaurant . In 1988, he opened the third Delhi Darbar in Dongri to help out a friend who had property there and was running into huge financial losses. The versova Delhi Darbar came up in 1977. This location was jafferbahi choice. HE had no suburban branch. And he believed Delhi Darbar had a big market in the upper middle-class suburbanite. It helped that a friends shop in versova burnt down and he sold the place to jafferbahi. This restaurant has a slightly larger menu than the other Delhi Darbar jafferbahi has cleverly included such items as baida roti and bhuna gosht here because he knows the eating habits of people living in suburban Bombay are different from these in the city. And hes right!

My passion is to expand further, but these children of mine dont encourage me," jafferbahi complained to me. Mazhur has graduated from the Darbar catering college, hes done a stint at the taj, and I have trained him in cooking myself. But he has a good eye for purchase. Mohsin my second son is studding catering in Switzerland. And Moin, the youngest boy, is helping me with the restaurants. The girls, Rizwana, who is married, and Lubna and Needa, are more painstaking and understanding. But I tell them, get an education that is your asset, not the business. If you are a B.Ed or M.Ed you are worth at least rs15, 000 a month. But my children are cautions. I want to experiment with new concepts, give man cheap and fast food, try and catch a different clientele. I tell my kids, 'if the business suffers a loss, so what, I can take it. Dont worry. Take the risk. But they wont!"

Jafferbahi himself has finished taking all the risks. Apart from his Delhi Darbar restaurants, which he owns in partnership with a surviving brother, he has the catering business, a residential hotel called Mogul Place in Masjid Bunder area of Bombay, and a posh Delhi Darbar Restaurant in Dubai. The kitchen staff for all his units, he trains himself. Nobodys from outside, nobodys a professional, I teach them my formula, I asked curiously, is it a generic recipe or what? Jafferbahi smiled smugly. The formula, he sail, was in his mind. It had been there since his grandfathers time! And he knew it by heart, the exact and authentic Mughlai recipes for every dish on his quantities of the ingredients.

No sorry on jafferbahi would be complete without of his catering unit, the biryani Factory , at Clare Road in Byculla,Bombay.it is a big shed, really, in which there are open choolabs fired by wood on which the cooking is done by a family of old cooks. The Biryani Factory has butchery and a vegetable section. And crockery and cutlery to feed 10,000. Plus jafferbahi is creating a laundry to wash napkins and uniforms of his staff. At ant time with just three hours notice, I can cater for however many people you want," he says proudly. When there are big catering orders, jafferbahi will keep track of how the service is going through his manager on a mobile. I like to serve good food, see people happy, their satisfaction is my happiness, their goodwill keeps my Delhi Darbar banner up," he said

Jafferbahi Mansuri is a religious, Allah-fearing man. He is a strict and practicing Muslim, he says his namaz the required number of times a day, he provides place for his Muslim staff members to pray, he has done the Haj pilgrimage 20 times already, and he has been to umrah 25 times, he keeps all the rozas during Ramzan even though he is diabetic. I listen to him make calls to the manager of his mine are coming for dinner. There are women too. Seat them in the air-conditioned section. Take care of them. And make sure you serve them biryani, tell them jafferbahi said they must eat it!"
                                        

You may eat at any one of the Delhi Darbars; the biryani will taste the same. Thats because jafferbhai has trained all the cooks himself. They are not professionals who have passed out of catering colleges but men whose families have been in his employ for years.

Jafferbahi explains his expertise in the kitchen: 'My mother always told me that if I know how to cook, my gaddi will run, nobody will be able to get ahead of me. This is how he talks, in a simple, everyday manner. And he is a simple man, dressed in white kurta-pyjame, polished glasses.   

Jafferbahi children swear by his biryani. his cooking style is so distinctive, says his eldest son Mazhar, that we can taste a biryani and tell if Daddy has made it. But biryani is not all that they like 'Daddy to cook jafferbahi can cook the entire Delhi Darbar menu, right unto the last item in desserts, which is caramel custard. And there are times in his catering business when he personally turns out in the kitchen to help in the cooking if there is a big order.

Jafferbahi explains the USP of Delhi Darbar his success story so to say. If the quality quantity and price are correct, the service is perfect, and all these four things are in your control, then your customers will go home satisfied with their dining experience.