Opinion Express View on butter chicken battle: Tender at the bone

Butter chicken can be many things to many people. It can be a taste of home or a sinful indulgence; a weightwatcher’s bane or a foreigner’s foray into a new, vaunted cuisine. As it turns out, it can also be a bitter bone of contention, capable of simmering for years and dragging colleagues-turned-foes to court. The fight between Delhi restaurants Moti Mahal and Daryaganj over the ownership of butter chicken has now moved into legal territory. With Moti Mahal filing a trademark violation suit against Daryaganj, Delhi High Court is set to be the arbiter of who got to the coveted recipe first.

The dish’s disputed legacy harks back to the moment of Partition. Moti Mahal claims that in the 1930s, leftover pieces of tandoori chicken at their original restaurant in Peshawar had been given a new lease of life by owner Kundan Lal Gujral, who cooked it in a decadent gravy of butter, tomatoes, cream and spices. It had amassed such a following of its own that when the Gujrals moved to India in 1947, butter chicken remained on the menu of their new outlet in Delhi’s Daryaganj, where they were joined by Kundan Lal Jaggi in the kitchen. Jaggi’s relatives, proprietors of Daryaganj restaurant, claim that this gives them trademark rights over the dish.

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The fight over ownership is likely to linger on — the next hearing has been scheduled for May. But shorn of its commercial consequences, the dispute is an indication of the charged sentiments that food, especially as storied as butter chicken, with a fan following among prime ministers and visiting heads of states, actors and commoners, evokes. Family recipes and star dishes in restaurants rely equally on acts of collaboration and moments of inspiration in the kitchen. They signal a continuity of tradition, but also a hint of distinction that sets them apart, makes memories out of them. The butter chicken has long passed that test. It remains a legend. Does it really matter who got to it first?