The Nawabs of Awadh became semi-autonomous from the Mughal Empire and patronised culture, the arts and even gastronomy, all of which have left an indelible mark on India The story of Lucknow’s Tunday Kababi is oft-repeated in food circuits and among regular diners as well. The popular lore talks of a gifted one-handed kababchi (master of the grilled kabab), Haji Murad Ali (aka Tunday mian; Tunday meaning one-hand; mian is an Urdu title of respect), creating melt-in-mouth kababs for a king who had lost his teeth but not his will to eat. This story, however, is not completely accurate.
But before we dive into the real story of Tunday Kababi and what makes it so iconic, a little history of Lucknow and the evolution of its cuisine, of which the galawat ke kabab is an intrinsic part, is in order. ‘To understand the story of galawat ke kabab—not galawati kabab as people tend to call them, but kabab made with galawat, the tenderizer (papaya in this case), that gives them the name—one needs to go back in history to understand why the kababs of Lucknow are so delicate and different from their counterparts across India,’ journalist Mehru Jaffer, who is from Lucknow and has worked extensively on the region’s history, tells me when I talk to her about Tunday Kababi. Jaffer goes on to outline the complex yet little-known history of the nawabs of Awadh, the region that lies around the present-day cities of Ayodhya, Lucknow, and Kanpur.
The nawabs were connoisseurs of fine food .