Food History of Delhi

Key eras

1638, Shahjahanabad and the Mughal table

Shah Jahan moved the Mughal capital to his new walled city of Shahjahanabad from 1638, and Chandni Chowk was laid out in 1650 to a design by his daughter Jahanara Begum. Nihari, whose name comes from the Arabic word for morning, came later: food historians place its origin in Delhi or Lucknow in the late 18th century, as a breakfast after the dawn prayer.

1870s, the paratha shops of Chandni Chowk

A lane off Chandni Chowk once known for its silverware dealers began to fill with paratha shops in the 1870s. The stuffed breads, fried in ghee in iron pans, gave the lane its name, Paranthe Wali Gali, and sari and jewellery shops still trade between the paratha counters.

1913, Karim's opens in Gali Kababian

Mohammed Aziz cooked at the court of Bahadur Shah Zafar and left Delhi after the emperor's exile. His son Haji Karimuddin returned for the 1911 Delhi Durbar and in 1913 opened a dhaba near Jama Masjid, promising royal food for the common man. Karim's still trades from the same lane.

1947, Partition and the Punjabi kitchen

Partition turned Delhi from a Mughal city into a Punjabi one. Hindu and Sikh refugees arrived from West Punjab, and three cooks from Peshawar, Kundan Lal Gujral, Kundan Lal Jaggi and Thakur Das Magu, opened Moti Mahal in Daryaganj. Tandoori chicken, butter chicken and dal makhani spread from there across India.

1960s, new colonies, new cuisines

In 1960 the government allotted land by the Yamuna to Tibetan refugees, and the camp at Majnu ka Tilla grew into the city's Little Tibet. In the south, Chittaranjan Park was settled by migrants from East Bengal and became Delhi's centre of Bengali food, with fish markets, sweet shops and Kolkata-style street stalls.

Late 1970s, the hotel tandoor

Bukhara opened at the ITC Maurya hotel in Chanakyapuri in the late 1970s with a rustic North-West Frontier menu of tandoor kebabs and black dal, served in earthenware. It has kept the same menu ever since and took Delhi's Partition-era tandoor cooking into a five-star room.

Immigrant influences

• Punjabi refugees from West Punjab and Peshawar: The tandoor, butter chicken, dal makhani and chole bhature arrived with the families who crossed the border in 1947 and now define the city's everyday restaurant menu.
• Bengalis of Chittaranjan Park: East Bengal migrants built CR Park's fish markets, sweet shops and phuchka, chop and kathi roll stalls, the city's main outpost of Bengali eating.
• Tibetans of Majnu ka Tilla: The Tibetan refugee settlement founded by the Yamuna in 1960, known as Samyeling or Little Tibet, brought momos and thukpa into Delhi's everyday eating.
• Old Delhi's Muslim cooks: Families tracing their line to Mughal court kitchens keep kebabs, korma and nihari going in the lanes around Jama Masjid, Karim's among them since 1913.

Signature innovations

• Butter chicken, credited to Moti Mahal in Daryaganj after 1947
• Dal makhani, black lentils finished with butter and cream by the same Peshawari cooks
• Tandoori chicken as a restaurant dish, popularised at Moti Mahal
• Paranthe Wali Gali's deep-fried stuffed parathas, sold in the lane since the 1870s
• Daulat ki chaat, milk froth set overnight in the winter dew of Old Delhi
• Nihari made with taar, a share of each day's stew carried into the next pot