on Wednesday evening. The instant food range was launched by HT’s Advisory Editorial
Director, Vir
Sanghvi, along with former cricketer turned MP Mohammad Azharuddin and Monish Gujral, Managing Director, Moti Mahal Delux Trail.

Those who joined in despite the drizzle, included entrepreneur Promila Bahri and Director, Ministry of External Affairs, Dinesh Bhatia, who was accompanied by wife Seema.

Instead, the five dishes available in Moti Mahal’s RTE are Dal Moti Mahal, Chana Pindi Masala, Aloo Zeera, Sabz Moti Biryani and Butter Gravy (without onion and garlic). The range is priced between Rs 69-99 for a 300 gm packet. “When we did our market survey, we found that people are wary of buying non-vegetarian convenience foods,” says Mr Monish Gujral, Managing Director, Moti Mahal Delux Management Services. “That’s why we have the butter gravy – the customer can add the chicken or paneer,” he adds. Isn’t Moti Mahal a rather late entrant to the RTE category? “Yes, it’s a late entry,” admits Mr Gujral, “but we have been so busy opening new outlets and concentrating on restaurant expansion that this has got delayed,” he defends. The chain which had just four restaurants in 2003, now has over 100 in India and abroad, growing rapidly through the franchise route.

Also, according to Mr Gujral, although the Indian RTE foods market size is poised to double by 2014, it will continue to remain a secondary market – typically most Indian households still order from a restaurant nearby with convenience foods still an emergency back-up option. However, he feels, it’s the NRI market which will keep the RTE packets flying off-the-shelves. “People take six months supply of packaged foods for their children studying abroad,” he says.

The packaged foods will be initially retailed through the Moti Mahal outlets as well as an online portal motimahalreadytoeat.com.

Once talks are finalised, it will also be available at departmental stores as well as local grocery stores. Right now Moti Mahal will start with 25,000 packets of RTE foods a month though it has a capacity to produce a lakh packets a month. Over time, the menu will also be expanded to include a spinach dish, malai kofta and Paneer lababdar, says Mr Gujral. Future plans include launching a range of spice mixes, including Chicken Tikka Masala , Chana Masala and Dal Makhani Masala, as well as doubling the number of restaurants from 100 to 200.

According to a report in www.imagesfood.com, on the factors that propelled the company’s decision to enter the Indian market at this time, Gujral said, “So far, we have been focussing on the expansion of our various food-service formats — Moti Mahal Tandoori Trail, Kebab Trail, DNY Bread Bar Cafe, counters at various food courts and outlets in commercial areas. We wanted to have the complete range of our food-service outlets and then get into the RTE market in the country.”

I am no exception. In the past few years that I’ve been in Delhi, I’ve managed to tick off most of the items on my list. Except one. I’ve never been to Moti Mahal. My loss, I’m sure, but somehow whenever I’ve found myself in the serpentine lanes of old Delhi, I’ve found myself headed to Karim’s or the Parathewali Gali and promised myself to be back for that Moti Mahal experience soon.

So this week when I was handed an invite to the launch of ready-to-eat (RTE) signature Moti Mahal dishes, evocatively named Tandoori Trail, I sent up a silent prayer of gratitude to the foodie god. Now, if this wasn’t a case of the mountain coming to Mohammed…The products are results of years of research and have a shelf life of 12 months from the date of manufacture though they don’t contain any preservatives. A note on the packet claims that the preservation process has been developed by the Defence Food Research Laboratory of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DFRL-DRDO).

The first look at the packets that were delivered for review dampened my appetite somewhat. There were five packets—Dal Moti Mahal, Subz Moti Biryani, Zeera Aloo, Chana Pindi Masala and a butter gravy to which you could add paneer or chicken. Missing from the line-up are tandoori chicken or even butter chicken—the two nearly century-old creations of Kundan Lal Gujral that put Moti Mahal and Indian cuisine firmly on the world culinary map.

The second dampener was the packaging. It’s just about alright. Despite the pictures of sundry commendations bang on top, it doesn’t really make you salivate. But I chided myself that Moti Mahal’s place in history had been sealed long before evil MNCs seduced me with packaging. And didn’t I know better than to not judge a book by its cover, or a ready-to-eat by its packet?

Unfortunately, that old adage didn’t hold true. What came out of the packets were not much better than the lurid, low-res pictures of the dishes. The dal was too orange, too tangy for a real dal makhani. The whole point of a dal makhani is balance—equal proportions of tomato puree and butter. This one overdosed on the tomato puree. There’s just no comparison with the other RTE dal, the Dal Bukhara of ITC’s Kitchens of India brand. That treat of a dal makes you want to linger over every spoonful, savouring a dal that has been slow-cooked and then packed. This one simply left me cold. And dal makhani is one of Moti Mahal’s signature dishes!

But perhaps I’d had too high expectations, having heard and read so much about the restaurant but never having actually eaten there. The Subz Moti Biryani and the Chana Pindi Masala were better, though again, the chana recipe overdosed on the tomato puree. The biryani was a decent pulao-ish affair (I can’t really think of a meatless, not-dum-cooked rice dish as a biryani), with quite a few chunks of paneer. It was no better or no worse than the biryani at your neighbourhood take-away joint.

The Zeera Aloo is, however, a disaster. It tasted nothing like a zeera aloo, nor looked like one. It didn’t even look like the picture on the packet! That at least is yellow, with the zeera visible. What came out of the packet was, yes you guessed it, orange, with tomato-doused gravy and barely a hint of the zeera. Zeera aloo, I’ve always thought, is one of those dishes that are impossible to get wrong. It’s what your mother teaches you first, along with omlette and dal when you leave home for college. This RTE version would make even a first-time cook’s version of zeera aloo seem like a gourmet dish.

In an exclusive interaction with ImagesFood on the official launch of Moti Mahal’s RTE range, Monish Gujral, CMD of Moti Mahal Delux Tandoori Trail said, “After launching these five variants, we want to create excitement about our RTE brand and observe the market reaction on the same. Following the consumers’ response to our range, we will add 16-20 more variants but in a phased manner. We plan to add two-three variants every quarter.”

Targetting the larger segment of consumers, Moti Mahal has priced its RTE range between Rs 69 to 99 for a pack of 300gm.

On the factors that propelled the company’s decision to enter the Indian market at this time, Gujral said, “So far, we have been focussing on the expansion of our various food-service formats – Moti Mahal Tandoori Trail, Kebab Trail, DNY Bread Bar Cafe, counters at various food courts and outlets in commercial areas. We wanted to have the complete range of our food-service outlets and then get into the RTE market in the country.”

“Also, going by the psychographic changes, we feel that the Indian market is ready for such quick-fix meals now,” he added.

Moti Mahal’s RTE range will initially be available at Moti Mahal restaurants as well as on an online portal – motimahalreadytoeat.com, however the company palns to make the range available soon through modern grocery stores and even leading traditional grocery outlets.

The instant platter comprises dal, butter gravy, vegetable biryani, aloo jeera and pindi chana – five popular traditional non-meat dishes in demand at Indian homes across the world.

The range, Moti Mahal’s Ready-To-Eat, a part of its Tandoor Trail initiative, was launched by columnist and food writer Vir Sanghvi, MP Mohammed Azharuddin and Moti Mahal managing director Monish Gujral in the capital late Wednesday.
Moti Mahal’s instant food added to the burgeoning ready-to-eat market in India, estimated at Rs.800 million annually and shows potential for growth, given the large consumer base. Reports cite that the ready-to-eat food market in India was growing at a compound annual growth rate of 15 percent for the last five years.

‘We use a special technology for our ready-to-eat food developed by NASA that enables us to prepare them without preservatives. It has a shelf life of 12 months from the date of manufacturing,’ Gujral said. ‘We researched the products for five years before launching them,’ said Gujral, who has carried the 88-year-old family brand to a new level by expanding overseas. The eatery, which began as a small outlet in Pakistan’s Peshawar in 1920 by chef Kundan Lal Gujral, came to the capital in 1947 after Partition.

Kundan Lal created culinary history when he conceived the tandoori food cooked in a special oven called the tandoor by digging a pit right in the middle of his eatery in Peshawar to grill meat and vegetables marinated with spices. Upon arriving to India, a penniless Kundan Lal chanced upon an abandoned shed in Dariyaganj. ‘Some inner voice told him that it was the place to build a small eatery,’ the documents at the family’s archives said. Tandoori cuisine subsequently became one of the most sought-after Indian food worldwide. ‘We are positioning our brand Moti Mahal as a domestic food label to the consumers,’ Gujral said.

He plans to expand the convenience range to at least 16 products, including non-vegetarian food, in a year. The chain has four stand-alone eateries and 100 franchises. The managing director of Moti Mahal brand said an ‘extensive consumer research programme before launching the products showed that the timing was right’. The report showed that ‘women today had very little time to involve in regular household chores like cooking and it was driving the growth of convenience food like ready-to-eat products in India that was witnessing fragmented meal patterns’.

The Indian ready-to-eat food market was poised to double its size by 2014, the survey revealed. Food writer and critic Vir Sanghvi said: ‘It is wrong to say Indian cuisine is not innovative.’ ‘There’s the ready-to-eat butter gravy, dal (lentil broth) and pindi chana (curried chick pea) created by Moti Mahal. Earlier, we had to go out for dinner, but now we get it at home. It shows how much India has changed,’ he said.

‘Kitchens of India are being sold worldwide, especially in the NRI market in US that crave for Indian food,’ Sanghvi told IANS.’I like the Dal Bukhara of ITC and two products created by a Canadian company, McCain Food – aloo tikki and a three-minute idli which is sold in a frozen form,’ he said when asked to share his favourite ready-to-eat food with readers. ‘However, it is not so successful as the aloo tikki, but good enough. So far, I have found most of the ITC stuff good enough,’ Sanghvi said.

1.Moti Mahal Delux tandoori Trail out let now opens in the food chowk in DLF mall Saket
2. Bareily
3. Jodhpur
4. Surat
5. Patna

Moti Mahal was awarded winner of the Coca-Cola Golden Spoon Awards for the Most Admired F&B Retailer chain of restaurants of the Year 2009-2010.

The Moti Mahal Cookbook on the Butter Chicken Trail” along with an assortment of popular and the latest dishes introduced in the restaurant as well as a wide range of vegetarian delights have been scrutinized and chosen by Monish Gujral, Kundan lal’s grandson, to be included in his award winning book.
With a special focus on kebab recipes, be they of chicken, mutton, seafood, cottage cheese or vegetables, this book has it all.
Moti Mahal was the first restaurant in the world to introduce both Mughlai and Tandoori Cuisines.It’s elegance of past history describes the specialization in catering the most tempting and appetizing food with quality service since its foundation in 1920.

Moti Mahal was also announced the winner of the Best Easy Recipe Book of the World by Gourmand Book Paris on 11th Feb 2010 for its latest cook book called “The MotiMahal Cook Book on the Butter Chicken Trail” authored by Mr Monish Gujral, MD Moti Mahal chain of restaurants besides also being honored with the Award of the Best Restaurant in Delhi NCR by Mail Today.

“I would like to thank all the franchisees who are a part of our large Motimahal Family and who share our dreams and commitment” said MD Monish Gujral.
“Thank you for all the good wishes as my book The MotiMahal Cook Book has been awarded the best easy recipe cook book of the world” he added.