The Brief

If you’re looking for a quick, decent quality bite, there’s likely a chain in SoCal to hit the spot: In-N-Out for burgers, Mendocino Farms for sandwiches, Cava for Mediterranean food and yes, Chipotle for Mexican food.

But South Asian options at this level of speed, scale, and convenience are harder to come by.

The family behind Biryani Boys, the Pakistani fast-casual joint currently operating out of Anaheim Food Co., is hoping to fill that void. Owner Irfan Ahmed said he is focusing on making Pakistani food scalable.

“The concept behind Biryani Boys is to make South Asian food approachable in much the same way that Chipotle or Cava is approachable,” Ahmed said.

“They took these cultural cuisines, and they made them household staples in the American culinary experience and cultural experience,” he added.

Ahmed said he thinks folks are ready for a fast-casual South Asian option because he’s already seen it work in the U.K.

“Desi food is very much part of the cultural fabric there. There's quick-service, nice sit down, and everything in between," he said. "But for Americans whose lifestyles are begging for convenience, I think desi food generally does not yet serve that segment very well.”

Biryani Boys staff and team

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Courtesy of Biryani Boys

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Signature dish

Ahmed is the son of South Asian immigrants; his father, Jamil Ahmed, was born in India pre-Partition, after which he moved to Pakistan, where Ahmed’s mother, Talat Iqbal, was born and raised.

Growing up in Anaheim, Ahmed saw his mother, an excellent cook, operate a catering service out of their family home and in kitchens at local mosques.

One of her signature dishes was her biryani, a piping hot, long-grain rice cooked with a warm, salty, savory blend of spices like cinnamon sticks, cardamom pods, cloves, and cumin; vegetables like potatoes and onions; and usually a type of marinated meat, often served alongside a diced cucumber and tomato salad and a serving of yogurt.

Biryani Boy combo

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Courtesy of Biryani Boys

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Ahmed began sharing his mother’s biryani with his friends at annual friendsgiving potlucks with “the boys,” which is what inspired the restaurant’s name. As the potlucks grew over the years, drawing up to a hundred people each year, the biryani quickly became a mainstay.

While her food played a big role in the family, outside the house, Ahmed rarely saw any restaurants that offered the type of Pakistani food he wanted to eat.

So he worked with his family — including his parents, sister Sadaf Ahmed, and wife Sohila Khalili — to make his own, using his mother’s recipe to open up a restaurant different from the sit-down spots and buffet-style offerings he saw around him. The family opened their kitchen out of Anaheim Food Co. in October 2023 and has plans to open a brick and mortar space later this year.

Biryani Boys logo

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Courtesy of Biryani Boys

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To make a meal quick and simple to produce, Ahmed has narrowed down choices and created a customizable, modular system like the one found at Chipotle.

Diners can choose between two types of biryani: The Sindhi biryani, pulling from southeastern Pakistan and characterized by its spicy, savory, and tangy spice blend, plus additional flavor from prunes or plums, or the pulao, made with a simpler and lighter spice blend.

Both biryanis can be ordered with a ground beef seekh kabob, a pulled beef nihari or pulled chicken (both of which Ahmed likens to a birria), boneless chicken breast marinated overnight in cream and yogurt, or a potato kabob for vegetarians.

Then you have the sauces: raita, made with yogurt and spices, plus chutneys: a mild, cilantro based green chutney; a tamarind chutney; and an extra spicy red chutney to add flavor.

Ahmed noted that he is not hoping to create a fusion dining experience, or even one that is driven by authenticity alone. “You’re going to get your purists who are going to say, ‘This isn't my mom's Hyderabadi biryani.’” he said. “I'm not fusing flavors, I'm just changing the medium or the modality in which it's served. So I'm taking desi flavors, and I'm serving them in a way that's more familiar for the average common American.”

There’s also a range of rolls (flaky parathas wrapped around a meat or veggie filling), crinkle-cut masala fries topped with a house spice blend, and potato balls, similar to the beloved Porto’s classic from the outside, but more akin to a classic chapli kabob by taste. A range of lassis flavored with rose or fruits like guava, mango, peach, and strawberry, add a bit of sweetness along with South Asian-inspired cheesecakes topped with nuts and rose petals.

Ahmed emphasized how important it was for him for the brand to be visibly Pakistani. “There's a reason why I was very particular about choosing Pakistani, as opposed to just South Asian or Indian,” he said, adding that while there are cultural and culinary similarities between the two countries, the regional distinctions and the visibility matter.

“There are some distinctions in Pakistani food that you wouldn't find in Indian food. For example, it's heavier on the meat base, it's a little less spicy depending on where the region is," he said. "To me, biryani uses ingredients that are indigenous to the region of Sindh. Some of the kabobs have heavy Afghan influence, especially chapli and shami kabob, which is very unique to that part of the world as opposed to India."

Rose flavored lassi to quench your thirst

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Photo courtesy of Biryani Boys

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For the brand, he opted for a modern, sleek blue design, inspired by the Badshahi Mosque in Sindh, Pakistan, and embellished with Islamic motifs, like geometric patterns and crescent moons.

“The aftermath of 9/11 deeply affected the American Muslim community, leading to a reluctance among many Muslims to incorporate Islamic cultural elements into their public personas due to concerns about potential backlash or harm," Ahmed said. "I felt that it was time to correctly represent my true Muslim-American identity.

“Most Pakistani restaurants in Southern California, and maybe the U.S. in general, will call themselves Indian because it's easier to do that from a business perspective, because it's less controversial," he added. "And you expand your market; there are more Indians than there are Pakistanis, and you don't want to disenfranchise your core constituency. So it's better to say Indian than it is to say Pakistani."

He noted that while a majority of the response to Biryani Boys has been positive and supportive, he’s gotten some pushback on social media, including from folks who ask what makes his food distinct from Indian food.

“I was very scared when I put ‘modern Pakistani eats’ on the branding, and I am still to this day, but I've been blown away overall by the positivity and the reception, because I would say maybe 50 to 60% of our consumers are actually Indian, and they love the food,” Ahmed said.

Classic Desi Desserts include: Rasmalai Biscoff Cheesecake and Gulab Jamun Biscoff Cheesecake

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Courtesy of Biryani Boys

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Ahmed notes that he is most proud of starting a restaurant despite all the challenges that come with it and for seeing if he can make biryani scalable.

“Most restaurants don't do well selling biryani because it's hard to scale biryani. It's too labor intensive. It's not monetizable in the same way, you can't make money selling it in the same way here. Labor is much cheaper in India and Pakistan,” he said. “The second thing to be proud of is the fact that I am Indian and Pakistani, and am really creating and elevating our cuisine in the eyes of the average Westerner. If I could do that right, I achieved my goal.”

California clocked its second-worst snowpack on record Wednesday, a potentially troubling signal ahead for fire season.

It’s an alarming end to a winter that saw abnormally dry conditions briefly wiped from California’s drought map in January, for the first time in a quarter-century.

Though precipitation to date has been near average, much of it fell as rain rather than snow. Then March’s record-breaking heat melted most of the snow that remains. The state’s major reservoirs are nevertheless brimming above historic averages and are flirting with capacity, and a smattering of snow, rain and thunderstorms are dousing last month’s heat wave.

But experts now warn that California’s case of the missing snowpack could herald an early fire season in the mountains.

On Wednesday, state engineers conducting the symbolic April 1 snowpack measurement at Phillips Station south of Lake Tahoe found no measurable snow in patches of white dotting the grassy field.

“I want to welcome you call to probably one of the quickest snow surveys we’ve had — maybe one where people could actually use an umbrella,” joked Karla Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water Resources. “We’re getting a lot of questions about are we heading into a hydrologic drought? The answer is, I don’t know.”

State data reports that California’s snowpack is closing out the season at an alarming 18% of average statewide, and an even more abysmal 6% of average in the northern mountains that feed California’s major reservoirs.

Only the extreme drought year of 2015 beat this year’s snowpack for the worst on record, measuring in at just 5% of average on April 1st, when the snow historically is at its deepest.

“I think everyone's anticipating that it will be a long, busy fire season,” said Lenya Quinn-Davidson, director of the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources Fire Network.

“Without a snowpack, and with an early spring, it just means that there’s much more time for something like that to happen.”

‘It’s pretty bizarre up here’ 

In the city of South Lake Tahoe, which survived the massive Caldor Fire in the fall of 2021 without losing any structures, fire chief Jim Drennan said his department is already ramping up prevention efforts.

“It's pretty bizarre up here right now. It really seems like June conditions more than March,” Drennan said. “People are already turning the sprinklers on for their lawns.”

Without more precipitation, an early spring may complicate prescribed burning efforts. But Drennan said fire agencies in the Tahoe basin can start mechanically clearing fuels from forest areas earlier than usual.

“That means we can get more work done,” he said.

It also means homeowners need to start hardening their homes now, said Martin Goldberg, battalion chief and fuels management officer for the Lake Valley Fire Protection District, which protects unincorporated communities in the Lake Tahoe Basin’s south shore.

Goldberg urges residents to scour their yards for burnable materials, create defensible space and reach out to local fire departments with questions. The risks are widespread — from firewood, wooden fences, gas cans, plants, pine needles — even lawn furniture stacked against a house.

“In years past, I wouldn't even think of raking and clearing until May,” Goldberg said. “But my yard's completely cleared of snowpack, and it has been for a couple weeks now.”

‘A haystack fire’

Battalion chief David Acuña, a spokesperson for Cal Fire, said fire season is shaped by more than just one year’s snowpack.

Climate change has been remaking California’s fire seasons into fire years. And California’s recent average to abundant water years have fueled what Acuña called “bumper crops of vegetation and brush.”

“Most of California is like a haystack. And if you’ve ever seen a haystack fire, they burn very intensely because there's layers of fuel,” Acuña said.

Like Quinn-Davidson, Acuña wasn’t ready to make specific predictions about fires to come.

But John Abatzoglou, a professor of climatology at UC Merced, said the temperatures and snowpack conditions this year offer a glimpse of California in the latter decades of this century, as fossil fuel use continues to drive global temperatures higher.

How this year’s fires will play out will depend on when, where and how wind, heat, fuel and ignitions combine. But it foreshadows the consequences of a warmer California for water and fire under climate change.

“This,” Abatzoglou said, “is yet another stress test for the future in the state.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Thousands of immigrants who are lawfully in California are set to lose their food assistance benefits, known as CalFresh, starting this month.

The new restrictions stem from H.R. 1 — also known as the “Big Beautiful Bill” — which Congress passed last year.

The changes remove eligibility for certain noncitizens, including people with refugee status and victims of trafficking. It also applies to immigrants from Iraq and Afghanistan who have special immigrant visas for helping the U.S. government overseas.

 ”These are folks … many of whom have large families that we have a commitment to as a country because we welcomed them and invited them here to find a place of refuge,” said Cambria Tortorelli, president of the International Institute of Los Angeles, a refugee resettlement agency. “They’re authorized to work and they’ve been brought here by the U.S. government.”

The federal spending bill, H.R. 1, made sweeping cuts to social safety net programs, including food assistance and Medicaid. In signing the bill, President Donald Trump said the changes were delivering on his campaign promises of “America first.”

Officials estimate 23,000 people in Los Angeles County will be affected. The state estimates about 72,000 immigrants with lawful presence will be affected across California.

CalFresh is the state’s version of the federally funded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Undocumented immigrants have not been eligible to receive CalFresh benefits.

State officials say noncitizens who are currently receiving benefits will continue to get them until it’s time to renew their benefits — adding that people might be able to receive benefits again if their legal status changes to lawful permanent residents.

Who the changes apply to:

• Asylees
• Refugees
• Parolees (unless they are Cuban and Haitian entrants)
• Individuals with deportation or removal withheld
• Conditional entrants
• Victims of trafficking
• Battered noncitizens
• Iraqi or Afghan with special immigrant visas (SIV) who are not lawful permanent residents (LPR)
• Certain Afghan Nationals granted parole between July 31, 2021, and Sept. 30, 2023
• Certain Ukrainian Nationals granted parole between Feb. 24, 2022, and Sep. 30, 2024