A historic restaurant in Mumbai is offering free chicken curry to customers on Feb. 25, to celebrate the release of its longtime patron, Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt. The 56-year-old is being released from prison three years after being jailed for illegal possession of arms.
"We've decided to do this to participate in his happiness," Rashid Hakim, owner of Noor Mohammadi Hotel, told Mashable. "This is the least we can to do." The restaurant will serve 'Chicken Sanju Baba', a dish created by and named after Dutt free of cost between 12 p.m. and 12 a.m. on Feb. 25.
A popular Bollywood actor, Dutt is best-known for his role as a likeable gangster in the Munnabhai films. He has been serving the remainder of his five-year sentence for the purchase and possession of illegal arms from the bombers who were responsible for the 1993 serial bomb blasts in Mumbai which killed 257 people.
Started in 1923, the Noor Mohammadi Hotel is situated in south Mumbai's crowded neighbourhood of Bhendi Bazaar. The restaurant has been run by the same family for three generations and has a loyal clientele. Its best-selling dish is the nalli nahari, a slow-cooked bone marrow curry redolent with rich spices, whose fans include numerous celebrities and film stars.
Dutt has been a patron of the restaurant since the mid-1980s. Hakim recalls inviting the actor to inaugurate the restaurant's family section. Dutt visited the restaurant regularly in the early years, but later preferred to get its food delivered.
The dish 'Chicken Sanju Baba' was introduced into the menu around seven to eight years ago. Hakim had tried out a new recipe for white chicken biryani, which he sent to Dutt. The actor liked the biryani so much, that he told Hakim that even he loved cooking. He shared his recipe for chicken curry with Hakim, who asked him if he could sell it in the restaurant under Dutt's name. The actor agreed, and the curry became one of the restaurant's best-sellers.
Today, Noor Mohammadi Hotel displays the restaurant's recipe at its entrance. "The dish is so popular, that once even a vegetarian Jain family came to try it," Hakim recalls with pride. "While the parents were vegetarians, they said that their daughter was such a big fan of Dutt's that she had come to the restaurant only to eat Chicken Sanju Baba."