No one knows how many Indian restaurants exist worldwide; reportedly there are more than 5,000 in the United States alone. The exact number depends on how you define “Indian” and “restaurant.”
And most of them — from a little mom-and-pop shop on the corner to the Michelin-starred Junoon in New York City — serve many of the same dishes, the standard repertoire that diners have come to expect. The menu just isn’t complete unless it contains skewered chicken tandoori in all its chile-hot, bright red glory, and butter chicken with its rich sauce in which to dip your naan.
“My grandfather invented both,” says Monish Gujral, 52, sitting in his family’s flagship restaurant, Moti Mahal, in the middle of India’s capital, Delhi. “In fact, I often think that it is hard to imagine Indian food today without my grandfather’s inventions.” He sounds proud and thoughtful more than boasting.
Most dishes develop gradually, through a combination of natural conditions, slow adaptation of tradition and the occasional innovative twist. You’d be hard-pressed to say when the dishes we today know as boeuf bourguignon and spaghetti Bolognese were invented; they just gradually came to be, as regional dishes promoted by a collective of home cooks.