The origins of butter chicken are being decided in court, with a spicy dispute cooking up over who exactly invented the world-famous dish.
Two Indian restaurants claim to have invented the curry and both want the right to call themselves the home of the original butter chicken recipe.
The heated argument was brought to court with a more than 2,500 page lawsuit by the family who run the restaurant Moti Mahal.
The family claim that their grandfather Kundan Lal Gurjal invented the curry in the 1930s when he opened the restaurant in Peshawar. They say the original recipe was created to use up leftover tandoor chicken, and was taken with him when the restaurant moved to Dehli in 1947.
As well as seeking the right to call themselves the inventor of the butter chicken, the family is seeking about $362,000 in damages.
The other claim to inventing butter chicken comes from the Daryaganj restaurant family. It says that a relative, Kundan Lal Jaggi, worked with Gujral to open the Delhi restaurant in 1947, and that it was there and then that butter chicken was first created.
They say that this gives them the right to describe their restaurant as home to the first serving of the dish, and claim they trademarked it in 2018.
The real question of its origin comes down to two things: where and when did the ingredients come together, and under whose instructions? Much of the evidence is circumstantial at best, and a witness would likely be needed who could link the words ‘butter chicken’ to a dish eaten decades ago.
Now the matter is before the courts in a battle to determine what exactly happened. However, the Indian court system is notoriously slow, with an estimated 50 million cases pending in the lower courts.
Although a hearing is scheduled for May, a verdict may not be handed down for months or even years.
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