Butter chicken ki lambi kahani
Once upon a time—in pre-Independence India—a man named Mokha Singh owned a restaurant called Moti Mahal in Peshawar. He had three employees: Kundan Lal Gujral, his cousin Kundan Lal Jaggi, and Thakur Das Mago. Flash forward to Partition. All the men end up in Delhi—bump into each other at a theka. The two Kundan Lals persuade their former boss to allow them to open a new Moti Mahal in the city (the role of Mago varies from one account to another).
The OG Moti Mahal: This is how the New York Times described the rise of the OG restaurant back in 1984:
The two of them [Kundan Lals I and II] pledged their family's jewellery, and opened up a dhaba, or roadside diner, on a crowded street in Old Delhi. Most of the restaurants in Delhi at the time were owned by the British and served what was described as British fare. Indian restaurants were primarily vegetarian. Delhi was ripe, not to say desperate, for this tandoori restaurant, whose name was Moti Mahal.
Soon enough, the joint was hopping with the who’s who—including the Nehru family, Raj Kapoor, Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev, (even our restaurants were non-aligned). And a culinary legend was born.
Moti Mahal Delux: The two Kundan Lals had a falling out in the 1990s—and sold the rental rights to the restaurant to their pal Vinod Chadha. He remains the owner of the original Daryaganj establishment to this day—and has no chicken, buttered or otherwise, in this fight. In 2003, Kundan Lal Gujral’s grandson—Monish—revives the brand by adding the descriptive but misspelt ‘Delux’.
This Moti Mahal Delux soon grows into a restaurant chain with 150 franchises in India and abroad—including Manhattan. Monish becomes a self-styled aficionado of all things butter chicken—including a cookbook titled ‘On the Butter Chicken Trail’.
Daryaganj: Trouble arrives in 2019—when the other Kundan Lal’s grandson Raghav Jaggi decides to set up his restaurant chain—named Daryaganj after the location of the OG Moti Mahal. Jaggi and his partners give this new brand a bold tagline—’By the Inventors of Butter Chicken and Dal Makhani’—which they trademark in 2018. They also end up on Shark Tank—where they repeat this grand claim—and thereby earn the enduring wrath of Monish Gujral.
The tale of two butter chickens
There are two separate versions of who invented the dish. In each, one Kundan Lal is the genius chef—while the other handles the business end. The Gujrals’ origin story casts the dish as a creative hack to save tandoori chicken in days before refrigeration:
[Grandpa Gujral] worried about what to do with the leftover tandoori chicken each night. It was his recipe to create a gravy with chopped tomatoes, cream, butter and spices, with sugar when the tomatoes were too sour for balancing flavours.
The Jaggi family’s version has a more colourful touch:
[Their] version of this story… has Jaggi as the hero, creating butter chicken “by chance” one night when a group of hungry guests showed up and he had to rustle up something filling with leftover tandoori chicken. “Jaggi even gave a twist to the regular maa ki dal at the request of one of the guests he was attending to. He decided to slow cook the dal on the tandoor with tomatoes, fresh white butter and his choice of herbs and spices, simmering it overnight and we got the wholesome and creamy dal makhni,” he says.
Point to note: The unassuming Mr Chadha—owner of the OG Moti Mahal—points out that his butter chicken may perhaps be far more authentic than either: “I had a memory of the original but tweaked it for the contemporary palate. In that sense, I, too, am an inventor of my kind of butter chicken.”
But who owns the butter chicken?
The actual basis of the legal battle remains unclear—despite the extensive reporting. But here’s what we know for now.
Butter chickens everywhere: No one owns the recipe—and no one claims to do so. Irrespective of who invented the dish, it has long been recreated, reinterpreted, even bastardised beyond recognition. Certainly, no one who’s eating butter chicken today cares about its khandani roots.
There’s the butter chicken served by iconic Delhi restaurants like Kake Da Hotel and Gulati. The owner of Ikk Panjab boldly claims: “We didn’t invent. But we are the best.” Hmm, the Michelin-starred Gymkhana in London may beg to differ about their signature dish. The humble murgh makhani has also migrated along with the Indian diaspora—ending up on pizzas in the US, as a topping on poutine in Canada and inside pies in Australia.
What’s in a name? According to Indian Express, this is about “trademark violation”—but neither party can claim to own the name of the dish:
Just like no one can claim exclusive rights over words like pasta, pizza and biryani for describing pasta, pizza and biryani, no one can claim exclusive rights to “butter chicken” for butter chicken. Butter chicken is a generic name for a type of chicken dish. Consumers are probably not thinking of Moti Mahal or Daryaganj when they think of butter chicken.
The disputed trademark in question seems to be Moti Mahal—since the claim to have invented the butter chicken is core to its brand:
Moti Mahal's plea asserts that Daryaganj's claim of being the "Inventors of Butter Chicken and Dal Makhani" is misleading and creates a false impression of a connection between the two restaurants… While Daryaganj has yet to officially respond, the restaurant's legal representative informed the court that the allegation is untrue. They emphasised that the initial Moti Mahal establishment in Peshawar was a collaborative effort involving predecessors of both parties, challenging the sole attribution of credit to Moti Mahal.
Point to note: The Indian courts famously intervened in a family dispute over who owns the name Tunday Kababi. Ultimately, the court ruled in favour of the grandson of Haji Murad Ali ‘Tunday’—the chef who is credited with inventing the dish. There have been similar battles over the deep dish pizza in Chicago and the Philly cheesesteak in, well, Philly. None of these disputes have been settled either in courts or outside.
The bottomline: Who the f**** invented butter chicken pizza? That’s what we want to know!
Reading list
Both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal (gift link) did colourful pieces on the butter chicken battle. Reuters and BBC News have straight-up news reports on the lawsuit. Indian Express has the best analysis but sadly is behind a paywall. Mint is best in summing up other culinary battles in the rest of the world. Whetstone magazine did an in-depth feature on the butter chicken—giving Gujral all the credit. Forbes looks at everyone else in Delhi who offers awesome butter chicken—OG or not. We recommend this SpicyIP piece for the legal angle.
