Who Created Butter Chicken? India's Great Curry Clash
A court has been asked to solve a bitter dispute between two families who have very different accounts of the origins of a dish beloved around the world.
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S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Anindito Mukherjee for The New York Times
In 1947, two men, both named Kundan, fled Peshawar during the bloody partition that carved Pakistan out of British India. They landed in Delhi and soon became partners in a restaurant called Moti Mahal serving food from the Punjab region.
On this much their descendants agree. Where they diverge is on the question of which of the men should go down in culinary history.
The two families both say that it was their own Kundan who invented butter chicken — the creamy, heavenly marriage of tandoori chicken and tomato gravy beloved everywhere north Indian food is served. And one of them has gone to court to try to prove it.
A picture of Kundan Lal Gujral at Moti Mahal.
Before we dig in: Yes, it’s hard to prove that any single person came up with dishes that have become ubiquitous. Also, does it even matter after all these years? Being first doesn’t necessarily mean being best.
But in the case of butter chicken, much is riding on the verdict — money, mostly, but also the legacy of the storied restaurant that the two men began building nearly eight decades ago, a span that covers almost all of India’s modern history as an independent nation.
The case is laid out in a heaping 2,752-page document filed in Delhi High Court. In it, the family of Kundan Lal Gujral, who run Moti Mahal, claim that the descendants of Mr. Gujral’s business partner Kundan Lal Jaggi, who run an upstart rival chain, Daryaganj, have falsely asserted that butter chicken was Mr. Jaggi’s brainchild.
The lawsuit offers a pre-refrigeration-era sketch of how the dish came to be. Mr. Gujral, it says, “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 flavors.”
The “Original 1947 Butter Chicken” at Daryaganj.
Mr. Jaggi’s grandson, Raghav Jaggi, tells a different story: that his own grandfather invented butter chicken by chance.
In this version of events, it was late one day and the kitchen was nearly out of stock, save for a few pieces of tandoori chicken. Mr. Jaggi, his grandson said, was asked by a large group “to make a gravy and add tandoori chicken into it so that everyone could have a hearty meal.”
The butter chicken at Moti Mahal.
Mr. Gujral’s family isn’t buying it. “It is not possible to create the butter chicken gravy ‘on the spot,’” their lawsuit argues.
Daryaganj, an upstart rival to Moti Mahal, was started in 2019.
In its first incarnation, Moti Mahal was a large, open‐air dining spot in Old Delhi where guests could go into the primitive kitchen and watch the food being cooked. Shopkeepers around the current restaurant, in south Delhi, still reminisce about the original place.
been a fixture in Delhi for nearly 80 years.
Diners are greeted by a poster of the elder Mr. Gujral that identifies him as the inventor of tandoori chicken, butter chicken and dal makhani. Inside are portraits of him with Indian prime ministers, politicians and Bollywood stars.
Many guests come looking for the same taste they have enjoyed for decades, even if the tandoori chicken is now cooked in steel ovens run on gas, and not the coal-fired clay ovens that the government has banned to cut down on pollution. (When this correspondent popped in the other day for some interviews and — strictly for reporting purposes — a taste test, a municipal inspector argued his way in to check whether the gas one was indeed being used.)
The city government has banned coal-fired ovens, so chicken is now cooked in a gas oven.
She said she missed the smoky taste of chicken from the coal-fired ovens, and complained that, on this night, there was a tad too much salt in the gravy, which the manager dutifully replaced.
“For Punjabis, butter chicken is comfort food, and I think Moti Mahal is the best,” said her son, Pawan.
Raksha Bahl with her son, Pawan,
at Moti Mahal on her wedding anniversary.
Daryaganj is a stark contrast in vibe and ambience, plush and modern, though it similarly advertises itself with the tagline “By the inventors of butter chicken & dal makhani” and displays portraits of luminaries served by the elder Mr. Jaggi.
Daryaganj has a more modern, plush atmosphere than Moti Mahal.
Mishika Verma, a 22-year-old advertising professional, said she preferred the original version. “Frankly, I like this butter chicken better than Moti Mahal because it’s more real,” she said. “What you get elsewhere is too creamy and heavy.”
What she didn’t care about was who created the dish.
“The claim may be really important to them personally,” she said. “I can understand.”
The original butter chicken at Daryaganj
has a coarser texture.
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Oh, I love it and to settle the dispute name both as co-discoverers of this tasty dish.
My wife likes Butter Chicken and since new Indian restaurant opened around 15 days ago several miles from us we tried it out last weekend. She had the Butter Chicken and loved it, I had the Punjabi Mutton which is really a spicy, slow cooked goat dish. We split an order of Aloo Gobi and Garlic Naan. All was most excellent.