Edmonton man embarks on year-long quest to find best butter chicken in town

An Edmonton man is on a delicious mission to explore his culinary heritage.

Food blogger Ramneek Singh is taking a year to try and find the the best butter chicken Edmonton has to offer.

"I'm calling it the 2024 Butter Chicken Odyssey, inspired by Stanley Kubrick's 2001 Space Odyssey," Singh said.

Singh had been reviewing and writing about the local food scene for four years when he started to feel like something was missing. 

"You're reviewing the same meals, you're talking about new restaurants opening up and I wanted to change the way I did things," he said.

To spice things up, Singh decided to return to his roots and take a deep dive into popular dish from his ancestral home.

"I might as well go back to my heritage and start getting intimate with my own cuisine and find my niche," he said. "That's why I went back to butter chicken, because butter chicken is the most famous Indian dish.

"It's also the most famous Punjabi dish and I'm fiercely, unapologetically Punjabi."

There are more than 80 Edmonton restaurants offering the dish, Singh said, and each have something different to offer.

"I'll tell you what makes a bad butter chicken, tomato soup and rubbery chicken breast," he said. "It's not just chicken breast, It's chicken tikka cooked in a tandoor … and if you're not using that perfect Punjabi harmony, you're not going to get good butter chicken, it's gonna be terrible."

Food blogger Ramneek Singh sits down for butter chicken at Chutney in Edmonton on March 24, 2024. (Miriam Valdes-Carletti/CTV News Edmonton)

According to Singh, it's hard to nail down exactly what the perfect butter chicken tastes like, because the dish is believed to be less than 100 years old.

Reportedly invented some time after 1947, the history surrounding the creamy concoction is so contentious that its origins are being debated in the Delhi High court.

Kundan Lal Jaggi and Kundan Lal Gujral both claim to have created the dish and their families are currently locked in a bitter legal battle over the matter.

While Singh can't say which man really is responsible for butter chicken, he knows where it came from.

"One thing that's certain is that it's a Punjabi dish, because both Kundan Lals were Punjabi," Singh said.

Singh plans to taste and rate 50 of Edmonton's versions of the dish over the next nine months. As of Sunday, he had tasted 15.

So far, Chutney and the Masala Tree are near the top of the growing list.

"It's all about our chefs," said Raman Manchenta from Masala Tree. "They put all their love, all their magic – especially they know how to play with spices."

"We work very hard," said Riaz Khan, owner of Chutney. "We work from our heart, and our spices, we grind all our own spices."

Singh hopes his culinary curiosity inspires Edmontonians to consider visiting one of the dozens of local restaurants on the list before reaching for the jar on the shelf.

In December, he hopes to celebrate the end of his appetizing odyssey with a trip to India.

You can follow Singh's journey and find his top recommendations on his Facebook page. 

With files from BNN Bloomberg and Miriam Valdes-Carletti