Watch The Amazing Invention Of Indian Butter Chicken

India’s butter chicken, a smokey grilled chicken covered in a vibrant sauce of tomato, cream, butter, and spices, is one of those rarefied foods that people love to eat both at home and when they travel. It’s been consumed by international glamour icons like Jackie Kennedy as well as truck workers in rural India at roadside stands.

A lawsuit has emerged around butter chicken, raising the important question of who is entitled to claim the creation of the dish. The two men who started Moti Mahal, the eatery where butter chicken was probably first served in India, are fighting each other’s grandson. “My family’s legacy has been threatened by this lawsuit,” states Monish Gujral, the founder’s grandson. He wishes the other grandson would give up pretending that the meal was invented by his grandfather. The family has filed a lengthy 2,752-page document to support their allegations in this significant lawsuit.

So where was the origin of this dish? Let’s travel through time.

“Delicious, creamy, and melted.”
The two individuals who created Moti Mahal had a lot in common, beginning with having the same first name: Kundan Lal Jaggi for one and Kundal Lal Gujral for the other. From the same hometown—Peshawar, in what is now northwest Pakistan—they were both cooks.
During the devastating 1947 Partition, when departing British overlords split South Asia into Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority India, the two men escaped Peshawar. As a result of intercommunal violence, millions of people crossed the recently formed border in both directions: Muslims went to Pakistan, and Hindus and Sikhs went to India.

Jaggi and Gujral opened a restaurant in New Delhi called Moti Mahal, which translates to “Pearl Palace” in Hindi, and began serving food in a way that was unfamiliar to the residents. The butter chicken is a major attraction.
Among the diners was the well-known chef and actor Madhur Jaffrey, who first visited as a young teenager. “We loved it because it was like nothing we had before,” she continues. Jaffrey said she had never tasted anything like that sauce, calling it “creamy, melty, and delicious. ” You would crack open your naan, snap out a chunk of butter chicken, and then take a bite out of that pickled onion. It truly felt like heaven.”

She claims that the location expanded and gained prominence. Getting food to go on picnics became the thing.
It appears that the restaurant benefited from some real star power: “Jawaharlal Nehru, who was the first prime minister of India,” says Amit Bagga, who, along with Jaggi’s grandson, developed the Indian butter chicken chain Daryaganj and is aware of the history of Moti Mahal.

State visitors, including “Richard Nixon to Jacqueline Kennedy—top people used to come there,” according to Bagga, were occasionally invited by Nehru to the restaurant. “All of them used to try the same food: butter chicken, tandoori chicken.”


In the 1990s, Gujral and Jaggi, the restaurant’s founders, sold it. The recipe for butter chicken was never recorded by them. The Gujral family soon launched their own spin-off series.
A sign outside one of their New Delhi stores said that Gujral invented butter chicken on a recent day. Many people in this place enjoy the heavy butter chicken inside that matches the crimson velvet décor.

The competing 2019-founded Butter Chicken franchise, Daryaganj, makes a mirror-image claim. There it is, on a sign outside one of the Daryaganj stores, claiming that Jaggi is the creator of butter chicken. Under the restaurant name is a motto that reads, “By the Inventors of Butter Chicken.”
It wasn’t until Jaggi’s grandson reiterated that assertion in July of last year on Indian Shark Tank—where he presented a Daryaganj franchise expansion to affluent backers—that this turned into a brawl. He stated that one evening, a rush of customers entered the restaurant, and his grandfather quickly prepared a tomato-butter sauce to stretch out some tandoori chicken.

The Gujrals filed a complaint in January, a few months later. A hearing was held on January 16, and according to the local media, one more is scheduled for March 18.
The hearing is scheduled for May 29.