🍛 Which hotel has the best biryani in Hyderabad? My ranking so far

I fly home from Riyadh once a year, and every trip I do a biryani run. This year it was 6 hotels in 4 days. My mother said I came home thin and left heavier. Paradise first, always. The chicken dum biryani there tastes the same as it did when I was 12. Bawarchi is spicier and the pieces are bigger. Go before 1 PM or you'll wait 40 minutes. Shah Ghouse at midnight is its own thing. I went with 2 cousins after a wedding and ate standing. Not the best biryani on the list. But hot at 12:30 AM with a cold drink, who's complaining. Cafe Bahar near Basheerbagh was oily on my visit. Still ate all of it. The raita saved it. Sarvi in Banjara Hills is the fancy one. The kebabs are good. The biryani is fine. I paid double. Hotel Nayaab near Charminar was the surprise. Soft mutton biryani, and the table took 25 minutes. My uncle swears Nayaab is better for nihari than biryani. He's probably right, but I wasn't ordering nihari. Ranking so far. 1 Paradise, 2 Bawarchi, 3 Nayaab, 4 Shah Ghouse, 5 Sarvi, 6 Bahar. Argue with me. I know this list will make some people angry. My cousin deleted me from a group over Bawarchi once. I'm going home again in March and I want to add 3 more places. I've only got 5 days. I need 3 more places, somewhere that isn't on every food blogger's list and has parking. Tell me where you go for your biryani when family visits. Not the famous ones, the one you'd go to alone. Bonus if the salan is good. I'll bring my mother, she's the harshest critic I know.

There is a smaller hotel near Malakpet that never makes these city wide lists but has been making biryani exactly the same way for over twenty years according to the owner, who still handles the dum himself most evenings.

Grew up near one hotel that my family swears by and married into another family that is fiercely loyal to a completely different one, dinner conversations during the first year were more tense than they should have been over rice grains.

Reading this list made me hungry and reminded me of my salary at the same time. Anyone who starts at Paradise is going to have their entire budget wiped out by the time they reach Nayaab. Is this about eating biryani or doing a full Hyderabad food tour at this point? Either way I am saving this list, my stomach and my wallet clearly need very different kinds of planning before the weekend.