These guys come up a lot on our YAMU Facebook page with scores of people recommending them as one of the best places for Biryani in the city. So today at some point in the afternoon a starving YAMU crew with a big biryani-hole to fill set out to see if Big Bite really was Colombo’s saffron rice spot of choice.
Arriving at the Kohuwala outlet a little late (1.30 pm) we were told they only had bbq chicken left so we waited (ages) for them to painstakingly grill some promising hunks Once we finally received our golden-grilled prize we rushed back to the Indi.cave to devour and deliver our verdict.
The Verdict
The chicken was excellent, but it took them half an hour so we would have been pretty enraged if it wasn’t. Generous portions, you get half a breast a wing and some other bits- char grilled on the outside soft on the inside.
The actual biryani though, for us this is the rich saffron and meat infused rice, was disappointing. It just didn’t have any depth of flavor – meat, saffron, spices, condiments flavoring nothing really came though . Basically just colored basmati rice with a little hint of chicken stock. It wasn’t bad in anyway, better than the offering at the Buhari Hotel but a far cry from the sawans dished up by our favorite biryani making Wellawatte/Dehiwala caterers.
What really let Big Bites biryani offering down though were the trimmings or lack thereof. We got just a bag of very unappetizing yellow curry sauce. It was bland, tasteless just colored thickened goo. And where were the other condiments… the onion sambol, the Maldive fish, the chutney, the pickle, the raita? This is what makes a Sri Lankan biryani even Buhari hotel and Raheema’s will dish out some green chilli sambol/chutney. I think Big Bite is Pakistani owned but I imagine Pakistanis have some delicious condiments of their own.
The lack of extras meant we were eating hunks of chicken on yellow rice. That really isn’t Biryani as far as I know and I really hope this isn’t the best biryani in Colombo because at Rs 430 per bbq chicken biryani serving it’s not worth it.
At least we don’t think it is.
A lot of people do love this place though, so did we do something wrong? Is the straight up biryani much better than the bbq? Is the Dehiwala outlet better than the one at Kohuwala? where are the condiments? we’d like to know…..
