In the dog-eared cookbook of India’s culinary delights, the section for Delhi is uniquely beloved. From crisp, gooey sweets like jalebi to the tangy flavor of lamb pulao, the city is built around enjoying, sharing, defending – and bickering over food.
Lately, those passions have fixed on a single question: Can you trademark the world’s most famous recipes?
For weeks, two popular establishments serving butter chicken, perhaps the most Delhi of Delhi’s dishes, have been in court seeking clarity on the matter. The plaintiff, an old-school restaurant chain called Moti Mahal Delux, has argued in 2,752 pages that its founder was the original inventor of butter chicken and therefore anybody who says otherwise is guilty of infringement. The defendant, a newer restaurant named Daryaganj, has countered by pointing out that it, too, has ancestral ties to another cook who claimed ownership of the dish.
This month, proceedings in the Delhi High Court will resume, with a major hearing scheduled for May. Managers at both restaurants have submitted newspaper clippings, archival photographs and food awards to back up their claims. Publicity from the case has been a financial and marketing boon for the chains, evoking nostalgia for the creamy chicken dish.
“It’s my family legacy that’s in question here,” said Monish Gujral, the owner of Moti Mahal Delux. Gujral said his grandfather created butter chicken before Partition happened in the 1940s. “It’s a very personal thing.”
This is no minor lawsuit in Delhi, where bylanes are packed with vendors selling every kind of spice, the local tea seller is a neighborhood fixture and food is inscribed with centuries of culture. Many of the city’s iconic dishes survived and evolved through generations of foreign rule and plunder. The tussle over butter chicken is about branding and business, but it also gestures at sacred preoccupations in India, where the origin of everything from the tunday kabab to rasgulla, a spongy dumpling, has come under similar scrutiny.
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