In 1957, Nagasamy Naidu -- a paan seller in Tamil Nadu's Dindigul -- realised his wife’s unique style of biriyani had potential to go places and opened a small 4-seater eatery.
This unique recipe uses short-grain seeraga samba rice, tender Kannivadi goat meat, a secret spice blend, and a side of dalcha made with mutton bones, brinjal, potatoes, and lentils.
The reason? Naidu sitting at the cash counter in a white shirt, white dhoti and — always — a white turban (or thalapa), inspired by freedom fighter-poet Subramanya Bharathi.
When Naidu passed away in 1978, his son renamed the restaurant Thalapakatti Anandha Vilas and expanded to Coimbatore with a second outlet.
In 2008, when Naidu's grandson moved to Chennai, he opened a new outlet there -- despite being told Chennai would never accept biriyani without basmati.
For an entire month, not a single customer walked in. That’s when they highlighted the turban -- a symbol of trust, tradition, and unmatched taste. And people started coming!
When copycats flooded the market, the family fought to protect their legacy and won the exclusive right to use 'Thalappakatti'. Today, they serve over 10,000 plates of biryani daily in Chennai alone!
Today, Dindigul Thalakappati is a global empire, with over a 100 outlets across the world, including in Dubai, Paris, New York, Malaysia, Singapore and Sri Lanka.
Biryani is now cooked in central kitchens with automated machines. But it tastes exactly like it did in 1957-- the secret lies in their dry-ground spices, sourced all the way from Dindigul.