Moti Mahal
We were invited out for dinner with my sister-in-law’s family and we got to choose the place, so we decided on the original Moti Mahal in Old Delhi. This is the place that Murgh Makhani or Butter Chicken was created. To most Canadians this is the dish that best describes Indian food. But, as a family, we don’t really like the dish (I’m sorry). In fact, my Mum has never cooked us Butter Chicken in our lives.
With food the first rule is to always remember that people will always prefer some dishes to others, which is normal. We felt it was important to come to Moti Mahal to learn about their history and story in order to understand the dish better and always keep on improving our own recipe.
The restaurant has been open for 47 years, and there are now franchises in a handful of locations in Delhi, as well as London too. Moti Mahal was also the place that started tandoori dishes (think tandoori chicken tikka). How they cook is they would pre-cook their tandoori chicken ready for service, instead of throwing it out when it got dry they thought of a way to reduce waste and bring some of that moisture back to the chicken. So, they added cream, butter and tomato to make a sauce and added the chicken. And so Butter Chicken was created. How appealing does that sound?!
Let me just stop my story there briefly to say Poppadoms only uses free-range chicken breast meat from the Fraser Valley, and our tikka chicken in-house is cooked to order, so no dry chicken there.
Back to Moti Mahal. It’s pretty much a hole in the wall and with traffic it took us an hour to get there, but we were greeted by some very nice staff. This was the first stop for Gordon Ramsay when he came to India to film Gordon’s Great Escape. As soon as we walked in, Mum asked about Mr Ramsay and asked to see their tandoor. They openly let us into the kitchen to meet their kitchen staff and see what type of tandoor they have. Mum asked if Gordon Ramsay swore at them when he came, but they said no. He was extremely polite and professional.
Our group of 10 ordered a mixture of tandoori vegetable and meat for starters. I tried one of everything and I have to admit everything did kind of taste similar, but tasty nonetheless. For mains we did things ‘family-style’ and all shared. We had Butter Chicken, Daal Makhani (creamy black lentils), Mushroom Kadhai (stir fry), Palak Corn (spinach purée with corn), Laccha Prontha (a layered flaky flatbread) and Garlic Naan of course. With all this rich food and meat the Delhi belly set in. From now I will try not to eat street food and will lay off the meat for a bit.
