Indian restaurants play legal chicken over dish origins
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Two Delhi, India, restaurants have declared a food fight over who created the country’s most famous dish: tandoori-baked butter chicken smothered in tomato, butter and cream sauce.
Reporting on a lawsuit and a hearing slated for May, Reuters explained that the family behind the renowned restaurant Moti Mahal claims its founder created the soulful curry in the 1930s.
In a 2,752-page court filing, it has sued rival chain Daryaganj, accusing the newly-opened restaurant — 2019 — of falsely claiming to have invented the dish as well as dal makhani, a popular lentil dish that is also laden with butter and cream, according to Reuters.
The family that runs Moti Mahal is seeking $240,000 in damages, also alleging that Daryaganj has copied the layout of its website and “the look and feel” of its restaurants.
“You cannot take away somebody’s legacy ... The dish was invented when our grandfather was in Pakistan,” the managing director at Moti Mahal told a reporter.
The operators at Daryaganj, in turn, argued that a late family member had partnered with the founder of Moti Mahal when he opened the restaurant in 1947, and the dish was invented there. That gives it the right to also lay claim to the creation of the dish, they said, providing to Reuters as proof a faded, hand-written partnership document registered in 1949 to back its argument.
