Necessity is known to be the mother of invention. It is a principle that applies equally to entrepreneurship, as demonstrated by the story of Kundan Lal Gujral – founder of Delhi’s historic Moti Mahal Restaurant and inventor of famed Indian dishes such as butter chicken and daal makhni.
Gujral was barely 13 when his father, Dewan Chand, a cloth merchant, died due to pneumonia. Left to fend for himself and his mother, Maya Devi, Gujral joined as a helper at ‘Mokhay Da Dhaba’, a popular streetside kiosk selling sherbets and chuskis (ice lollies) in Chakwal, a small town near Peshawar. With his chatty, cheerful disposition and passion for work, the young helper soon rose through the ranks to manage the kitchen, customers and galla (billing and accounts section). With the ageing and ailing owner Mokha Singh entrusting more and more responsibility to his young lieutenant, Gujral steered the dhaba toward the more lucrative business of running a sanjha chulha – an all-day kitchen that served daal, roti and tandoori kebabs – a cuisine that was popular with people of northwest frontier areas.
This kitchen became a playground for Gujral, the young self-trained chef who loved experimenting with ingredients and churning out his own unique take on mainstream food items.
One of the biggest challenges of running an all-day tandoori kitchen was that chicken and meat would become dry and hard. To solve this culinary puzzle, Gujral decided to dunk the tandoor-cooked chicken in a thick gravy of cooked tomatoes infused with a burst of Indian spices. This was the start of ‘butter chicken’, an iconic dish that, over the next seven decades, became a global insignia for Indian cuisine.
“I had the fortune of spending time with my grandfather and learning about his journey as a creative chef who invented a globally loved Indian dish. I wondered why he created a novel tomato-based gravy. So, I asked him why he did not use a tempering of caramelized onions with ghee or the brown gravy popular in kormas (curries), or even a curd-based gravy used in yakhni (broth) etc. He said he loved the subtle earthy flavour of tomato gravy as it tenderised the tandoori chicken while infusing a new flavour in the dish,” says Gujral’s grandson, the chef, entrepreneur, and food writer Monish Gujral.
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How butter chicken, daal makhni were born
The innovative gravy consisted of boiled tomatoes hand crushed with a wooden mathni (masher) on a huge jaali (sieve) to remove seeds and tough fibre. The soft pulp was then cooked in butter with cumin, asafoetida, black cardamom, and green chilli. A dash of Kashmiri red chilli powder lent the curry its classic fiery red hue. “Even today, we use the same method – we never use a mechanised blender because the tender texture of the gravy is part of the butter chicken’s universal appeal,” says Monish.
Brazilian author Paulo Coelho famously wrote: “When you want something, all the universe conspires to help you achieve it.” Something like this may have happened with Gujral. In 1930, the local police dropped in at Mokhay Da Dhaba to take the owner to the station and question him about a liquor-related complaint. Knowing that the owner was old and weak, Gujral offered to go in his place. This gesture from a loyal employee indebted Singh to Gujral, and so, when the time came to pass on the baton, Singh readily agreed to give control of the shop to his protege.
Thus started a new chapter for Gujral as a chef-cum-entrepreneur. Renaming the dhaba Moti Mahal was Gujral’s way of paying tribute to his mother, who had an abiding love for pearls. By the time the Partition happened in 1947, Moti Mahal didn’t just have a dedicated clientele – it had also invented one more dish that became a global favourite.
“The people of northwestern province regions have always been fond of having kaali urad ki daal [black lentils]. In homes, this rich but hardy daal is soaked overnight and then cooked in a handi [pot] for long periods to soften its tough covering. Every home has its own recipe, but largely, people temper it with asafoetida to reduce its flatulence and top it with milk or cream to smoothen its spiky favour. Like all restaurant owners, my grandfather’s lunch came from home every day,” remembers Monish.
But one day, his grandfather decided to do something different with his lunch. “As he poured his homemade daal over a bit of his dhaba-made tomato gravy, he realised that even the daal tasted better in tomato-based gravy. In a flash of culinary inspiration, Kundan lal added this newly invented ‘daal makhni’ to his menu – and thus began the saga of this epic vegetarian show-stopper dish,” adds Monish, glowing with familial pride.
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Nehru’s favourite
After Partition, Gujral was granted a rehabilitation conveyance deed for a shop, and he re-launched his muse Moti Mahal on the arterial road of Daryaganj. Named so as a place close to the dariya or Yamuna River, Dariyaganj was a former British cantonment that eventually got filled with havelis of prosperous seths and sahukars of Old Delhi. Soon, the rasiks or gourmands poured into Moti Mahal from both the walled city and the new and fashionable colonial capital of Lutyens’ Delhi, making the restaurant a haunt for celebrities and commoners alike.
Meherchand Khanna, a minister in former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s cabinet and a food enthusiast familiar with the eatery from its Gora bazaar days in Peshawar, introduced the restaurant and its unique menu to the PM. From then on, Moti Mahal’s fare became part of Nehru’s diplomatic offering for State guests. The result is an evocative food brand that runs more than 100 franchise restaurants worldwide today and, more importantly, is known to have invented two dishes that made the world curious about Indian cuisine.
This article is part of a series called BusinessHistories exploring iconic businesses in India that have endured tough times and changing markets. Read all articles here.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)