We speak to Monish Gujral, a man with traditional training in Indian cuisine who has overseen the transformation of Moti Mahal from a small business serving Tandoori food in Delhi into a multi-national corporation with over 100 franchises worldwide. When did you first start cooking? Did you always want to work in a restaurant? It started in the summer of 1983 while I was waiting for my high school results, thoroughly bored at home due to the long wait for the results

Running a restaurant brand that had its inception right back at the pre-partition times, isn’t an easy task. Notwithstanding the predicament of the situation, Monish Gujral took on the challenge rather well and strived hard to pave the path of the Moti Mahal brand to new heights. In a candid conversation with The Restaurant Times, Gujral reveals the journey of Moti Mahal, how they ventured into this volatile domain of the F&B space and managed to maintain their iconic status

Every day, tens of millions of adherents across the country visit their places of worship to seek solace and sustenance for their souls and other, more earthly bits. Among these, lies another type of institution — the generic north Indian restaurant, where the cult of chicken (of the sect “butter”) resides at the apex of the godhead. Butter chicken and its infinite avatars, have evolved, if not into a composite religion, then at least into a faith constituting millions. “I’ve

An outlet of the renowned Indian Franchise restaurant Moti Mahal has officially been opened in Maldives. With its exciting tandoori and spice flavors, the Indian-cuisine restaurant was inaugurated on Wednesday night at the first floor of the Rasfannu pavilion by Chief Guest Minister of Youth, Sports and Community Empowerment, Ahmed Mahloof. The ceremony was also joined by the franchise’s Managing Director Monish Gujral. While the restaurant has over 150 franchises strewn across the globe, this is the first time it’s

Over the past few decades, the frenzied pace at which Delhi has transformed, finds reflection in its food scene. Many millennials have just two demands of an eating joint: that the restaurant is stylish and the liquor is served quickly. In South Delhi, hipper restaurants in Hauz Khas Village still find takers even as a large number of restaurants have disappeared after a stint of less than two years. In the demanding club and bar-hopping scene of 2019, it is

At the far end of a crammed Daryaganj gulli, bustling with all manner of trade, is a heavy wrought iron gate. Push it ajar and you step into an overgrown garden defining its central courtyard. The Terrace is an old sprawling home that takes you back in time. It’s the last intact kayasth haveli in “Shahar” – “The City” – the once magnificent Shahjahanabad, the only city that really mattered for its residents. Two years ago, on a peaceful winter afternoon, the sun streaming

It’s one of the most popular restaurant dishes on Indian menus all across the world. Unlike more complex curries, this one is simplistic. There is no sophisticated spicing or intricate cooking process to wax eloquent about, yet butter chicken continues to incite both love and war! Which restaurant serves the “best” version? What indeed defines “best”? What is the ideal flavour profile of the dish — beyond tomato-y and smooth? Is a little sugar warranted to balance desi tomato tartness?

Succulent morsels of meat marinated with spices and skewer-grilled in hearths or ovens have tantalised the taste buds of food lovers for centuries. These define the cuisine of the frontiers – recalling memories of rugged deserts of Asia and Europe, the march of Islam and large armies cooking meat in open fires. “Kebab”, or the way the meat turns, is derived from Arabic word “cabob”, a distortion of the Aramaic word “kabbaba” or “kababu” meaning to burn or char, says

The Chinese proverb ‘wealth does not pass three generations’, which means that the first generation builds the business, second take it forward and third blows up all, might sound appropriate for many legacy businesses globally. However, there are exceptions across sectors, including food, that are doubling up the fortunes based on their decade old legacy. It is hard not to stop by the distinct aroma that comes from the narrow lane of Gali Kababiyan, near 17th-century mosque, Jama Masjid, in

Shivanna Sadanand first went to the Mavalli Tiffin Rooms (MTR) in Bengaluru 50 years ago, and has been a regular ever since. A lot changed in his life over time: He took a voluntary retirement from being the private secretary to former Congress minister HM Channabasappa, joined his family business of iron and steel; raised, educated and married off his two children. But even today, the 78-year-old dutifully spends his Friday evenings and Sunday mornings at MTR, catching up with

It started with a moment of curiosity. Two years ago, I was invited to speak at a gathering of alumni from Delhi’s Catering College (known within the trade as the Pusa Institute because of its location). As I looked around at the audience, I noticed that everybody who mattered in the hospitality sector seemed to be there. How was that possible? I wondered why the Mumbai Catering College, which is as highly regarded, had not been able to produce such

Originally a Punjabi preparation, it is a soft, succulent dry dish made by slow roasting spiced and marinated chicken in a clay oven called tandoor.History-Sounds unbelievable, but historians are said to have found the first evidence of a meat preparation which looked like Tandoori Chicken in the ruins of Harappa. -Tandoor like clay ovens and chicken bones with char marks dated 3000 BC are said to have been unearthed at the excavation sites.– Ancient Sanskrit treatise Sushruta Samhita mentions meat

Cooking is like the performing arts. To be a good cook, one must first be an artist. Then, and only then, can you become a chef. Great chefs ‘play’ with their dishes in the same way that an artist ‘plays’ with his canvas – preparing a visual extravaganza for the mind to digest. That explains the unbearable temptation for people who are unable to resist food. In my opinion, our state of mind plays a major role in our eating

The legend in Bollywood playback history was started with Kundan Lal Saigal but well before him, another legend from the foodies’ world named Kundan Lal Gujral started his tryst with the destiny with tandoori in Chakwal, Undivided Punjab (now in Pakistan). He was the first in Peshawar to dig a tandoor right in the middle of the eatery. Since then, Peshawar was introduced to the culinary art of Tandoori chicken by Legendary Kundan Lal Gujral. This was a grand success. Soon he

I wrote last week in Brunch about the battle over the invention of Butter Chicken. It is not surprising that the piece generated so much interest – Delhi is a Butter Chicken-crazy city. But I learned three things from the responses. First of all, we have done such a bad job of recording the history of Indian food that even people in the business were surprised to know that Butter Chicken was popularised as late as the 1950s in Delhi.

He never ventured into the kitchen as a child, so all those theories about getting your children to become future chefs by learning cooking early and smearing themselves with pancake and muffin dough, or even a plethora of masalas, seems to hold no water, at least in his case. In fact, Monish Gujral, CMD, Moti Mahal Delux, hated the thought of cooking for quite a long time. But when he turned 17, things changed. On orders from his lovable and

If the tandoori chicken and the butter chicken (and its European relative, the chicken tikka masala) are the most famous Indian dishes in the world never to be cooked in Indian home kitchens, then there must surely be a vegetarian candidate for the same category.    I think I have found it: it is the black dal so beloved of Indian restaurants in India and everywhere else in the world.    When it comes to black dal I have to come

I was in Bangkok last week and sought out my favourite Thai food: chicken and rice. The dish is related to the better known Hainanese Chicken Rice, which consists of slices of poached chicken with flavourful white rice, served with clear chicken soup and condiments. This dish, though theoretically a specialty from Hainan in China, can now be found all over the world (Singapore claims it as one of its national dishes) but the Thai version, Khao Man Gai, which