Chef Who Fed Queen Elizabeth Kept Mughal Cooking Alive

When chef Imtiaz Qureshi served kakori kebabs to Queen Elizabeth II in 1983, he wasn't just feeding royalty. He was keeping alive a 400-year-old cooking tradition that nearly disappeared with India's Mughal courts.

Born in Lucknow, Qureshi learned the art of dum pukht as a teenager. This ancient slow-cooking method seals meat and spices in heavy vessels, coaxing out flavors over hours of gentle heat. By the 1940s, he was already cooking for 10,000 soldiers at age 16.

His son Ashfaque remembers a father who never needed to taste a dish to know if the salt was right. "He would always get it right," Ashfaque recalls. The chef would arrive home from work at dawn, just as his seven children prepared for school, always bringing sweet treats like kulfi or shahi tukda.

But Qureshi's real gift was storytelling. "For him, food had to be told as a story," Ashfaque says. "We knew him as a storyteller who became a chef."

His creativity shone when Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru came to dinner. The vegetarian leader was being hosted by Uttar Pradesh's chief minister, but Qureshi was famous for mutton dishes. So he invented vegetarian versions that tasted like meat: bottle gourd curry instead of fish, jackfruit instead of whole chicken, lotus stem kebabs replacing minced meat.

In 1978, Qureshi opened Bukhara restaurant at ITC Maurya in Delhi. The menu became a time capsule of royal Awadhi cuisine, introducing mainstream India to dishes once served only in Nawabi kitchens. Chef Ranveer Brar later recalled saving his entire salary just to taste Qureshi's kebabs there.

The Ripple Effect

Qureshi's influence reshaped Indian gastronomy for generations. When young chefs joined his kitchen, they didn't just learn recipes. They learned his philosophy: that food should engage all five senses, that your soul and the dish should "walk in the same line."

His guest list read like a who's who of history: President APJ Abdul Kalam, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, and countless international dignitaries. Each meal was a masterclass in patience and precision, honoring techniques perfected over centuries.

The Indian government recognized his contribution with a Padma Shri award in 2016. But his proudest achievement might be simpler: keeping ancient recipes alive through changing times.

Even during war, Qureshi saw food as a force for good. During the 1962 Indo-China War, he fed soldiers in Lucknow, believing nourishment could heal more than just hunger.

Today, his family runs multiple restaurants carrying his legacy forward. Each kitchen still practices the dum pukht method, still debates every detail the way Qureshi taught them. "If something was wrong, it had to be called out," Ashfaque remembers.

When Qureshi passed in February 2024 at age 93, he left behind 77 years of culinary innovation. His life proves that preserving tradition doesn't mean living in the past—it means bringing history's best flavors into today's kitchens, one slow-cooked dish at a time.