Taste Test: Butter Chicken

Butter chicken at Moti Mahal Deluxe

THE LIDO ROOM
5, Jamshedji Tata Road, Churchgate. Tel: 2285 0500.
Price: Rs405
Verdict: The Lido Room, in the 60-year-old Ritz Hotel in Churchgate, is a dimly lit bar where suits drown drinks at the close of a workday. A little known fact is that the bar also doubles up as the hotel’s multi-cuisine restaurant. They do a standard butter chicken, with a thick saffron-coloured curry seasoned with dry fenugreek leaves. The mild curry is incidental to the dish in which the meat (generously heaped) is meant to be the star. And it is, after straining the inch-thick film of grease that floats over the curry. ★★★☆☆

JAI JAWAN
Shop No.7, Mangal Bhavan, 14th Road, off Linking Road, Khar. Tel: 98217 00036.
Price: Rs150
Verdict: This takeout station is popular for its fried fish and tandoori chicken, but their butter chicken is just as good as those two menu favourites. They refrain from adding too much orange food colouring, as is the case with most other restaurants that serve butter chicken. The gravy-heavy dish has a balanced blend of cream and butter, but is pleasantly thin, and seasoned with fragrant fenugreek leaves and red chilli powder. That said, unevenly cooked pieces of chicken—some so undercooked that they were inedible—marred an otherwise flavourful curry. ★★★1/2

COPPER CHIMNEY
Shop No.6, Phoenix Mills Compound, Senapati Bapat Marg, Lower Parel. Tel: 2496 3333.
Price: Rs325
Verdict: This 35-year-old Mughlai restaurant has three thriving outlets (Worli, Kala Ghoda and Lower Parel) and primarily caters to corporate lunches and kitty parties. Familiarity may draw you back to the restaurant, but the butter chicken certainly won’t. The meat is well-cooked, but the gravy too sweet, possibly because of their generosity with cinnamon powder, making it impossible to get through even a quarter of it. ★★☆☆☆

KHYBER
Mahatma Gandhi Road, Kala Ghoda, near Rhythm House, Fort. Tel: 2267 3227.
Price: Rs338
Verdict: Tourists are the 48-year-old restaurant’s most frequent patrons, but the butter chicken isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s more parts lethal grease than gravy and not the kind that you could drain out or wash down with a cola. The dish is blood red from food colouring, and overwhelmingly rich, with tender pieces of chicken dunked in a sea of spicy curry. ★☆☆☆☆

MOTI MAHAL DELUXE WINNER
102, First Floor, CR2 Mall, Nariman Point. Tel: 6654 6454.
Price: Rs479 (excluding tax)
Verdict: Delhi folk living in Mumbai maintain that the city lacks authentic “Dilli” style chicken makhani. But Moti Mahal Deluxe, the first Mumbai outpost of Delhi’s popular Moti Mahal, serves exactly that. Moti Mahal was set up in Delhi sometime in the 1920s by Kundan Lal Gujral, a man widely credited with inventing tandoori chicken and butter chicken. We haven’t been to the one in Delhi but can say that the chef in Mumbai has lavished special care on this dish. The chicken to gravy ratio is disproportionate, but it would be churlish to complain because the creamy gravy is of the right consistency and perfectly spiced with slit green chillis. ★★★★1/2