FOOD SPECIAL .............WHO MOVED MY BUTTER CHICKEN?

 WHO MOVED MY BUTTER CHICKEN? 

The expanding palate of the Delhi diner is slowly pushing the Mughlai-Punjabi restaurant off the gastronomic map. The butter chicken has moved to the neighbourhood takeaway 

    These days when Dilliwallas argue over where to head for dinner, what is conspicuously missing from the pot pourri is the North Indian-Mughlai-Punjabi restaurant, the kind that spelt comfort food for a chilly winter day, the kind that saw several thousand birthday and anniversary dinners on red velvet couches through the ’80s. The explosion in the restaurant industry has left the original dining out mascot behind — the North Indian restaurant.
    Today, the popular restaurants for this cuisine are the ones that established themselves decades ago such as the Moti Mahals, Gulatis and Chonas. Not one among the scores of new restaurants livening up the capital’s gastronomic scene offer the cuisine traditionally associated with Delhi.
    Chef Manish Mehrotra, the man behind Indian Accent contemporary Indian food, attributes it to the frequency of dining out. “Eating out has increased by leaps and bounds. And you can’t eat the same food all five times,” he says.
    The globe-trotting Indian has also become more wont to experiment with food. Mehrotra’s restaurant, which is considered one of the best Indian restaurants in Delhi, for instance, offers foie gras stuffed galawat, masala-miso scottish salmon and achaari New Zealand lamb shank. “Outside of India, the rogan josh-shahi paneer-daal makhani-butter chicken combination is understood as ‘Indian food’. But it has changed within India. Indians want to try different things,” says Mehrotra.
    It is not just about foreign cuisines though. The notion of Indian food has moved on from the binary idea of South Indian = idli/dosa and North Indian = chicken/roti. The void left behind by the restaurants of the 80s has been slurped up by more authentic, regional cuisines, from Bihari to Mizo, from non-dosanon-idli Tamil to Maharashtrian and Malabari. Both the city and the diners are richer for it.
    “There is definitely more regional variety. My mother, for instance, might not be an expert on Bengali or Sindhi food but she would generally be more familiar with it. So, obviously North Indian places get less people. Chefs are also innovating. Indian food is now thankfully out of vicious cycle of North Indian food,” says Mehrotra.
    The comfort food of North India does exist though but in nooks and crannies of residential colonies that run on their quick, efficient delivery systems of freshly-made food. Celebrity chef Marut Sikka says, “The accessibility of Indian food is tremendous. It flourishes in several tiny places across the city. You can get delicious rolls, or the perfect tikka from a corner restaurant and order them in and have a great meal. North Indian food is not a success as ‘eating out’ because such food is just about eating. It is not an experience. Today, however, ‘eating out’ is much of an experience as it is about the food.”
    Food enthusiasts and TV food show hosts, Rocky and Mayur echo the thought in their online review of Havemore Restaurant in Delhi’s Pandara Road market, which is the city’s North Indian eatery ghetto. Say Rocky & Mayur: “The focus is on food here, seating is tight and privacy is a distant dream. Narrow
aisles and busy waiters make for a hectic environment. It’s only about the food so you won’t mind once you’re seated.”
    But what exactly is this Mughlai food? Even chefs demur from defining the cuisine. Mehrotra laughs and says, “Even I don’t understand Mughlai is. Is it Hyderabadi? Awadhi? North West Frontier Province? I was doing management trainee interviews recently and a few said their favourite cuisine is Mughlai. So I asked them to describe it. They said, sir, butter chicken. But butter chicken was invented in 1950 in Darya Ganj! Gosht akbari, keema noorjehani, murg akbari — just putting a Mughal name in a dish doesn’t make it Mughlai,” says Mehrotra.
    But be what it may, the quintessential chicken in the red, buttery gravy with a sprig of coriander as garnish is not going to go extinct. Sumit Gulati of Spice Market restaurant (now called Gulati-Spice Market) says that he changed the name of his restaurant to connect it to the lineage of Gulati, another Pandara Road stronghold, which was started by his father, Vinod Gulati, in 1959. Spice Market is a popular restaurant that went beyond just North Indian fare and has come to be well-known for its laal maas, chettinad dishes and patthar ke kebab. “The intention initially was for regional food. But we saw that in big groups, with varied demographic, someone in the group always wanted a rogan josh, paneer dishes, mutton barra — Gulati specials. So, now we have those too. If you are in South Delhi, there are like 500 options but very few options of these (North Indian). We don’t have huge competition,” Gulati says with a laugh.
    You can take a Punjabi out of New Delhi but you can never snatch the chicken from his hand. Mehrotra, who never got butter chicken in Patna in his childhood but found it in Kake da Hotel in central Delhi, says, “You can never compete with butter chicken, no matter how modern or how fusion your restaurant is. At the end of the day even I love eating it. My first comfort meal always is safed chawal, sukhey aloo, and yellow daal… a close second will always be garlic naan and butter chicken.”

PADMAPARNA GHOSH TCR130713
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