Its origin is credited to three Punjabi restaurateurs who established Delhi's renowned Moti Mahal restaurant in the 1950s: Kundan Lal Jaggi, Kundan Lal Gujral, and Thakur Dass. This dish has been a mainstay of Indian restaurants all over the world for well over 60 years — from London to New York, Sydney to Moscow, and back to Delhi itself.
Even more fascinating than the dish is the narrative of how butter chicken was conceived. Prior to the partition, owner of the dhaba-turned-restaurant, Mokha Singh Lamba established the Moti Mahal in Peshawar. Kundan Lal Gujral and Kundan Lal Jaggi spent some time there as servers. Just across the street from the restaurant, Thakur Dass was working at his family's wholesale business for rice and pulses.
In a similar vein, Saransh Goila launched the Goila Butter Chicken in Mumbai in 2016 with the curry serving as its signature dish. His culinary style has been influenced by his upbringing in a family with a shared knowledge of regional cuisine and the understanding that one must eat in accordance with the seasons. He gives his food a taste of home. In just seven years, the cloud kitchen, which started off as a popular culinary pop-up in Mumbai, has served millions of plates with well-known Indian meals. A beloved chef and cookbook author whose name is intimately associated with butter chicken; Saransh Goila has prepared to introduce his version of the national delectable to Hyderabad at Biryani by Kilo Restaurant.
“Vivek Sahani, my chef partner and I started it together. Both of us are from IIHM Aurangabad. We were batch mates as well as roommates. In 2015, I quit the Food Food Channel where I had been working for three to four years, and then, did a lot of pop-ups at home. From those pop-ups, one thing that stood out was butter chicken,” Saransh says. It is no mystery to us that Mumbaikers started to relish Saransh’s re-creation of it. “They felt it was different from the classic. It was also a home recipe where I was trying to balance the sweetness, spiciness, and creaminess of butter chicken and that’s how we decided to launch a delivery store and see how that goes in Mumbai.” It first opened a flagship store in Andheri in 2016 and quickly became popular. Love and motivation from celebs from the entertainment industry like Priyanka Chopra, Uday Chopra, and Nargis Fakri, kept him going.
Any cook or chef might prepare a dal, and each one would deliver a distinct finish. The intricate butter chicken, which has a wide spectrum of potential, has also lost some of its allure due to its increased popularity over time. Saransh adds, “A lot of people complain that all they get to taste is a rich, creamy layer of tomato sauce with khub sara meetha (too sweet), which almost feels like they are having a dessert. When you deep-dive into making the dish, I feel that it’s an art and a subject.”
As a chef-driven delivery company, Saransh values his culinary process and selects fresh ingredients like tomatoes to prepare butter chicken and other delights instead of adding excessive amounts of sweetness or colour. He slow-cooks his bases, ensuring that all the spices that go into their meals are of the highest quality. “Our butter chicken is cooked for four hours. We spend time cooking the food – what’s going inside it,” he tells us.
₹700 for two. Around 9 outlets deliver across Hyderabad.
E-mail: chokita@newindianexpress.com
Twitter: @PaulChokita