Cover picture credits: Your Food Lab
For years, Delhi cuisine’s undisputed numero uno has been its butter chicken. As a Mumbaikar, a conversation with a friend hailing from the national capital often veers towards food debates. During these conversations, the Delhiite will make it a point to underscore that no one does butter chicken like Delhi. And I can’t help but agree. After all, the city is the birthplace of the dish that has, with time, blossomed into a cult classic.
We asked chefs, bloggers and those well-versed in the city’s gastronomy about where they head for their fill of butter chicken in Delhi.
1. Kwality
For Ishijyot Surri, executive chef and founder of Mulk, Miniyaturk & SJI Gourmet, a craving for butter chicken means an afternoon lunch at the Kwality restaurant in Delhi. Childhood nostalgia, he says, is the reason. “My grandparents would take me here. This restaurant was our go-to spot on outings, and the flavour of the butter chicken has remained consistently delightful over the years, evoking comfort with every bite.” While the butter chicken preoccupies Chef Ishijyot while at Kwality, he never misses out on the gulab jamun (an Indian dessert made of milk solids).
For those unfamiliar, the eatery has a coloured history dating back to 1940 when a gentleman Pishori Lal Lamba arrived in Delhi from Lahore and started a hand-cranked ice cream store ‘Kwality’, which is now synonymous with India’s ice creams and of course, the butter chicken.
2. Rajinder Da Dhaba
What started in 1968 with just one stall of fish fry and anda (egg) fry grew into one of the most renowned food joints in Delhi. Rajinder Da Dhaba has a legacy of serving the residents of the national capital traditional dhaba (roadside cafe) cuisine that tantalises taste buds with carefully chosen spices and flavours.
The story goes that the dhaba’s inception happened nearly five decades ago when Rajinder ji used to be a street vendor selling non-vegetarian fare on Kamal Cinema Road, New Delhi. The chicken curry and galauti kababs (minced meat dish) are still some of the bestselling menu items.
3. Baba’s
While most North Indian chicken renditions are known for their brazen flavours, the butter chicken packs a punch with a simple, time-tested recipe. Succulent chicken pieces are blanketed in a mix of cream, tomatoes and aromatic spices to produce a gravy with velvety notes.
And for a good helping of the dish, you can head to Baba’s in Delhi’s Defence Colony. On most days, you can find Chef Jatin Mallick, co-founder, Dos by Tres, Delhi, grabbing his fill of the dish, here. While many recipes end up calling for copious amounts of cream and tomatoes (for the sweet flavour and the red hue), the rendition at Baba’s manages to make it a perfect balance.
4. Havemore
Not just butter chicken, but the chicken tikka masala (a popular curry masala made with boneless chicken) and dal makhani (a North Indian dish made with black lentils and red kidney beans) are a must-have at the restaurant. The journey of the eatery from a tea stall that was born in 1959 to the now-famous multicrore restaurant chain has gone down in culinary archives.
And for Chef Jatin, this place features on his list of favourites. Not just this eatery, he says, “Pandara Road has been a go-to spot for ages. Whenever I used to visit Delhi, a visit to Pandara Road with the family was a must. That flavour of butter chicken is etched in my head.”
5. Moti Mahal
The OG butter chicken spot! It was here that the seminal discovery happened post-Partition. The story goes that Kundan Lal Gujral, a cloth merchant’s son began working at an eatery in Peshawar’s Gora Bazaar (in present-day Pakistan) in the early 1900s. After Partition, in 1947, Kundan Lal Gujral travelled to Delhi with his family as refugees, where Kundan reestablished Moti Mahal in Delhi’s Daryaganj.
As history tells us, the butter chicken was born out of the worry of having cooked chicken dry out. Kundan was on the lookout for a sauce with which he could rehydrate them. His solution lay in the butter sauce, which eventually gave history its best dish.
In its 1950s heyday, Gujral’s Moti Mahal was extremely popular with celebrities and world leaders, including Zakir Hussain, Jawahar Lal Nehru, Richard Nixon and John F Kennedy.
For Chef Davinder Kumar, executive chef, Hotel Le Meridien, Delhi, it is the authenticity of the restaurant that draws him to it. “There are very few restaurants that maintain the recipe, the taste and the aroma. With butter chicken, the skill lies in creating the aroma; when you keep adding elements to the dish it loses its personality.”
Chef Vikas Vibhuti, agrees. “My memories of this iconic place are associated with my OCLD (The Oberoi Centre of Learning and Development) days. It was a ritual every weekend to visit and enjoy butter chicken with chilli garlic naan (Indian flatbread).”
6. Mughal Mahal
Writer Marryam H Reshii calls the eatery “the big daddy of butter chicken”. “Competitors live in hope of uncovering some secret stash of canned Pelati tomatoes in their store room, but no luck so far: the sourness never varies! The progeny of Gulati have, thanks to COVID, developed a brand called Yours Truly Butter Chicken with seven variants of the same theme! Yes, that is how fanatical we are about our national dish, hereabouts.”
Many epicures have attempted to discover the secret behind the dish’s exquisite taste, some say it lies in the cream that is supposed to come specially from a dairy farm in Ashram, on the other side of Delhi.
7. Aslam Butter Chicken
While Delhi touts its recipe of butter chicken as a simple one, Aslam Butter Chicken, which has been doling out the delicacy for 25 years now, strays away from this levity. Secret masalas, roasted and charcoal-grilled chicken, and of course, a lot of butter go into the recipe at Aslam’s.
The recipe is a well-guarded secret that is passed down through the generations of the family. It is said that Aslam learnt it from his father and grandfather; till date, this consistency reflects in the dish.
Sources
Best butter chicken in New Delhi, as picked by the city’s foodies: by Anubhuti Krishna and Arundhati Ail, Published on 17 February 2023.
Edited by Arunava Banerjee
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