Zaika owner Babar Alam at his stall in sector 29. (Express photo)In 1998, 44-year-old Babar Alam left his hometown in Uttar Pradesh’s Bulandshahr and came to Noida in hopes of a better livelihood. Here, he started a humble meat shop.
Recalling a dream he had in 2004, in which he was selling biryani, Alam said: “I had that dream a month before some people had shut my meat shop. I bought a few utensils after my shop was shut and started a small roadside biryani stall. A customer liked my biryani so much that he offered me his stall in Brahmaputra Market, where I sell biryani even today.”
Alam is the owner of Zaika, a stall at the bustling Brahmaputra Market in Noida’s Sector 29, which sells Lucknow style chicken and mutton biryani, as well as nihari, seekh kabab, korma and other Mughlai dishes.
Each day, he begins cooking at 11 am. He buys ingredients from his brother’s meat shop and proceeds to cook in traditional spices and raw onion using a 45 kg copper handi. Alam uses P10 rice for its thin shape and uses a cloth as the dum on the handi’s lid. “The secret to a good biryani is how you use the spices. Too much can make the biryani bitter while too little will make it bland,” said Alam.
His sons and the workers open the shop at 5 pm and keep it running till 11 pm. Biryani, undoubtedly, is the stall’s marquee dish. The chicken version costs Rs 200 for a full plate, Rs 120 for half and Rs 70 for a quarter portion. Similarly, mutton biryani costs Rs 280 for a full plate, Rs 160 for half and Rs 90 for a quarter. When serving, Alam sprinkles some crispy caramelised onion and raw onion with a spicy salan. The meat in the biryani is cooked to such perfection that it can be torn apart even with a plastic spoon. People park their vehicles on the market’s periphery and usually stand and eat. “On some days when the biryani is finished, I, or my sons, have to quickly rush back home to prepare more,” said Alam.
Zaika attracts loyalists and foodies from across Delhi-NCR. “People come from Delhi, Noida, Greater Noida, Ghaziabad and even Gurgao and Faridabad to eat our biryani,” said Alam, who usually prepares the biryani on his own, though sometimes his two sons — Sameer, 18, and Zaid, 16, pitch in. “I had hired some people to cook the biryani but they don’t do justice to the quality of the dish. So I cook it myself,” he said.
Asked about who taught him to cook, Alam replies, “The almighty and my mother.”