Vanakkam, 359 Barkly St, Footscray. Phone: 9687 7224

Stepping into Vanakkam on my way home after an early evening social engagement, what I’m after is a feed while I read.

Certainly, the last thing on my mind is taking of photographs and blogging.

Especially as Bennie and I had done the business here a few weeks earlier and Vanakkam had featured in our yearly Top 10.

I do know what I am going to order – based on what we’d seen several customers eating on that previous visit, I am extremely desirous of biryani.

But as I soon as my meal arrives – goat biryani – out comes the camera.

For I have a hunch this’ll be the best biryani I’ve ever had.

It is.

All the usual components are present:

Vari-coloured rice of slightly less chilli kick than is generally the norm.

Plenty of meat pieces, on the bone but coming free easily enough; quite chewy, too, but that seems just right.

Raw onion slices and half a hard-boiled egg.

Typically runny raita and thin but tangy curry gravy I later discover is made especially to accompany the restaurant’s biryanis using tomatoes and cashews.

But wait – there’s more!

More fresh herbiage than usual, for starters, including coriander and even a little mint.

And – best of all – a generous garnish of delicious fried onions.

Eaten together, all these ingredients constitute a fabulous meal.

And one that is far closer to the complex, celebratory dish called biryani I imagine being served at weddings and the like but which I’ve long assumed beyond the budget constraints of any eatery.

This is plenty good enough for me and hands down the best biryani I’ve had in Melbourne.

As a Tuesday special, my dinner has cost me $10. Even at the regular price of $12, I’d consider it a bargain.

As I stroll back to my car, I realise the nagging lower back pain that has been a drag for several days – the sort of thing that inevitably presages much more severe and immobilising pain – has disappeared.

Whether this has anything to do with my biryani meal, I know not.

Biryani House, 61 Gordon St, Footscray. Phone: 9318 8007

No prizes for guessing this new Gordon St venture is a sister restaurant for the well-known King St, CBD, place of the same name.

It joins two other restaurants and a grocery in fostering a mini-Indian precinct on this stretch of Gordon St.

The new Biryani House is a nice room but very plain – wooden tables and chairs, some swirly wallpaper that looks like an optical illusion on one side and not much more.

We’re told that in the meantime aside from all-week dinner hours, lunch is served Thursday through to Sunday.  More week-day lunch hours may eventuate next year when the students – and there’s heaps of them hereabouts – return for a new academic year.

We’re tickled to find the menu starts with a list of “Aussie Favourites” – butter chicken, lamb rogan josh, lamb vindaloo and lamb madras.

Righto, now we’ve got them out of the way, let’s see what points of difference there are in the rest of the menu … and we find some crackers, ensuring an interesting meal and a hasty return.

Just for instance …

Khichdi – “traditional Hyderabad rice with lentils”.

Nehari – “a spicy soup made with tender lamb shanks garnished with fried onions and fresh grown herbs”.

Marag soup – “a fine soup delicacy made from tender chunks of lamb”.

Kahtti dal – “a lentil stew in tangy juice of tamarind”.

And so on … but we start with gobi 65 ($8.50, top picture).

It’s more austere than the same-titled dish we’ve had elsewhere – just some curry leaves and battered cauliflower, but golly it’s very good.

The thin batter is a crispy treat and the vegetable pieces totally moreish.

And we really, really appreciate it when the natural flavours of a dish come through despite high levels of seasoning, especially with a mild flavour such as cauliflower.

We squabble over who’s going to get the biggest pieces.

Another big plus at this place – almost all the chicken and lamb dishes are available in half-serves, $5.90 instead of $9.

This enables us to have a broader meal than would otherwise be the case, and we find our two half serves none too shabby in the size department at all.

Hariyali chicken is described as “a popular festive dish of chicken simmered in a unique blend of fresh green herbs and peppercorns”.

What appear to be juicy chunks of thigh meat swim in a rich sauce that has the green of the herbs and a wonderful slow burn of heat that glows from the use of much pepper.

Lamb aloo methi, “cooked with potatoes and touch of fenugreek leaves”, is good, too, with tender lamb and a colour splash from the fenugreek leaves, though it seems to us it’s not as distinctive as our chicken dish.

The potato element is awesome.

Both of these dishes are at the outer limit of spiciness that Bennie finds tolerable.

For bread, we choose lacha paratha (2.50), which we are told is just plain dough that is folded very many times.

Our lovely buttery bread does indeed have a croissant-like flakiness, and it goes real well at its main task – mopping up the last of our curry gravies.

Check out the full menu at the Biryani House website.