Vegetable biryani at Waitrose

This is your correspondent reporting from the front line… Waitrose has now started selling Veg biryani in its stores. Yes, truly.

Can you imagine how exciting this was for us when we went to our local for our weekly shop a couple of weeks ago and found a nicely packaged veg biryani in their Indian section? Yes, it does look pretty doesn’t it?

However, it has taken me two weeks to write this review owing to massive soul searching in a bid to ascertain whether the harsh review that follows is because

a) the biryani wasn’t good at all or

b) I am turning into a middle-aged person with a zero tolerance for less than average food (Incidentally, the middle-aged bit was brought home forcefully last week when on the phone to the BT technical help call centre, I found myself talking to Champa from Calcutta who spent 35 of our 60 minute conversation asking for my advice on her impending arranged marriage. “Be independent and insist on working” is what I said in case you are interested).

The soul searching combined with a family discussion and some external support from one of my friends has revealed that I am not alone in thinking that the quality of this biryani is appalling. Its highlight is that it tasted of nothing. N o t h i n g.

Therefore it cannot actually evaluated through the biryanometer. Sad state of affairs, eh?

Full marks for packaging though.. and do try the Waitrose Dhansak. It is quite delicious especially when had with some egg fried rice from their Chinese range. Well, we can’t be purists all the time, can we?