On the trail of tandoori

THE FOOD CLUB

Let me lay my case before you at the outset. I am a purist who believes that recipes should not be tampered with. You visit a restaurant called Moti Mahal Tandoori Trail if you are a hard-core carnivore and/or if you want the undiluted flavours of Punjab.

Similarly, if you are in Bangalore and you visit SouthIndies, you celebrate the fact that within its sleek, contemporary interiors you can partake of completely authentic vegetarian cuisines of the four southern states.

To barge into Moti Mahal Tandoori Trail demanding aloo bonda is as absurd as haranguing SouthIndies for tandoori chicken. I thought that much would be obvious, but I got into an argument with the marketing arm of SouthIndies who want to expand to north India and were deciding how far they should tweak their cuisine to suit the local palate.

Chef Venkatesh Bhatt, corporate chef and CEO of SouthIndies and I were on the same side of the debate. Against us were the marketing team whose view was, "Does it really make any difference whether you put tomato into the stuffing of a dosa or not."

It was our case that restaurants like SouthIndies are the product of decades of culinary research. To cater to customers who don't (or won't) understand the cuisine is self-defeating. But the hearts of the marketing team bled every time customers walked up to the door and walked right out after being told that SouthIndies served only vegetarian food.

Monish Gujral of Moti Mahal Tandoori Trail is the proud owner of 52 branches all over India. He maintains consistency in his largely franchised, but also company-owned, chain. However, consistency is not his bug-bear: catering to the local palate is.

Thus in his now-defunct branch in Siliguri, 80 per cent of all sales were vegetarian! In west Delhi, 80 per cent is the figure for sales of mutton and chicken, especially mutton. His Mumbai branches do a brisk trade in tandoori prawns, reshmi prawns, prawn tikka, in addition to, believe it or not, Goan prawn curry and Goan mixed vegetables.

If there is a whole section of dishes that are cooked in coconut (we are talking about Punjabi food here), Kanpur has a high selection of vegetarian food, Lucknow and Patna require every recipe to contain more than the usual amount of spice, and the branches in Gujarat are already in talks with Gujral to create totally vegetarian Moti Mahal Tandoori Trails.

To the average Punjabi, dal is synonymous with urad plus channa. In Mumbai, customers stopped ordering dal altogether till Gujral and his team hit upon the idea of serving yellow moong dal. To me, that is the unkindest cut of all, because Moti Mahal Tandoori Trail's five signature dishes include dal makhni.

I am really confused by all this. Why go to a Moti Mahal if all you want is the dal that you eat every day of your life? I welcome your feedback on the issue of whether restaurants should alter their cuisine.

marryamhreshii@yahoo.co.in