A Taste of Old Delhi in Surrey: Butter Chicken, Dal Bukhara and the Mughal Kitchen at Indian Panorama
Posted On July 26, 2026 by Admin
Old Delhi is not a restaurant concept. It is a place — a walled city within a city, its lanes still following the plan laid down by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in the seventeenth century, its food culture shaped by the same royal kitchens whose recipes have travelled further than almost any other culinary tradition in the world. The slow-cooked curries, the overnight dals, the charcoal-fired kebabs that came from those kitchens are the dishes that most people mean when they talk about Indian food — and the gap between the version available in most UK restaurants and the original is wider than it needs to be.
Indian Panorama in East Molesey closes that gap. The Old Delhi and Mughal cooking tradition sits at the heart of a menu that takes the subcontinent's most celebrated kitchen seriously — the slow-cooking times, the in-house stone-ground spices, the charcoal-fired tandoor that is the Mughal kitchen's most recognisable legacy. Authentic Old Delhi-inspired Indian food in Surrey is available on Walton Road, ten minutes from Hampton Court Palace, and it is unlike most of what passes for the same dishes in the county.
The cooking of Old Delhi is defined by three things: time, spice depth, and live fire. The great preparations of the Mughal court — the slow-braised meats, the overnight dals, the marinades that penetrate through hours of resting rather than hours of cooking — are not dishes that can be approximated by a commercial kitchen that prioritises service speed over flavour development. The depth that makes a Rogan Josh deeply aromatic rather than merely spiced, or a Dal Makhani silky and complex rather than simply thick, is the product of a process that cannot be shortened without consequences that arrive at the table.
At Indian Panorama East Molesey, that process has not been shortened. The kitchen grinds its spices in-house daily using a traditional stone-grinding method — preserving the volatile aromatic oils that give freshly ground masala its character — and the charcoal-fired tandoor operates at the temperatures that the Mughal kitchen's most famous dishes require. This is not a claim about inspiration or influence. It is a description of how the food is actually made.
Browse the full menu at Indian Panorama East Molesey
Butter chicken — Murgh Makhani in its original form — was created in Old Delhi in the 1950s at the Moti Mahal restaurant by Kundan Lal Gujral, who combined tandoor-cooked chicken with a tomato, butter, and cream sauce that had been developed to use the juices left in the tandoor's drip tray. It is one of the most globally recognised dishes ever to come out of a single kitchen, and it is one of the most consistently poorly executed preparations in the UK Indian restaurant landscape.
The version at Indian Panorama East Molesey is built on the original logic: tandoor-fired chicken — the char from live charcoal creating the smokiness that the sauce is designed to complement — finished in a tomato and cream gravy prepared with freshly stone-ground spices. The fenugreek that defines the authentic preparation, the balance between the acidity of the tomato and the richness of the cream, and the integration of the tandoor's smokiness into the sauce: these are the details that separate the genuine article from its approximation. In Surrey, on Walton Road in East Molesey, the genuine article is available.
If butter chicken is the most recognised Old Delhi dish, the overnight dal is its most revealing one. The Dal Makhani — black lentils and kidney beans slow-cooked for twelve hours or more in a preparation that traces its lineage directly to the dhabas of the Punjabi roadside and the Mughal court kitchens that influenced them — is the dish that demonstrates more clearly than any other what happens when a kitchen refuses to compromise on cooking time.
The lentils in a properly prepared Dal Makhani are not simply soft. They have broken down and reformed during the long cooking process into a preparation that is simultaneously textured and silky, the individual lentils still present but integrated into a sauce that has developed a depth no amount of spice added at the end of a short cook can replicate. At Indian Panorama East Molesey, the Dal Makhani is overnight. The difference is in the bowl.
The Kashmiri Rogan Josh at Indian Panorama is the preparation that most completely expresses the Mughal culinary tradition's influence on the restaurant's menu. Lamb marinated and slow-cooked in a 21-spice blend — the spices ground in-house, the cooking time measured in hours rather than minutes — arrives at the table with the depth and the aromatic complexity that the dish's reputation was built on and that most restaurant versions fail to deliver. The colour comes from Kashmiri chilli and ratanjot — not from food colouring — and the sauce has the body that only extended cooking produces.
For a first-time visitor to Indian Panorama East Molesey arriving from Surrey looking for the Old Delhi and Mughal cooking tradition, the Rogan Josh is the dish that makes the argument most clearly. Order it alongside the Dal Makhani and the butter chicken and the table has the full breadth of what the Mughal kitchen produced — available in East Molesey, in Surrey, ten minutes from Hampton Court Palace.
Every dish from the charcoal-fired tandoor at Indian Panorama East Molesey is a direct heir to the Mughal kitchen tradition. The tandoor came to India with the Mughal court and was refined in the royal kitchens of Delhi and Lucknow into the cooking device that defines North Indian restaurant cuisine globally. The Seekh Kebabs — minced lamb on skewers, twice-cooked — the Ajwain Chicken Tikka, and the Burrah Chops are all preparations with a direct lineage to those kitchens, prepared here using the same live charcoal technique and the same in-house ground spices that the tradition demands.
Finding a Surrey restaurant that operates a genuine charcoal-fired tandoor rather than a gas-heated alternative is itself uncommon. The quality of the food that emerges from the tandoor at Indian Panorama East Molesey is the reason that the restaurant holds the Good Food Award 2023 and maintains a 4.8-star Google rating that reflects consistent delivery across hundreds of visits.
Visiting Indian Panorama East Molesey
- Address: 98 Walton Road, East Molesey, KT8 0DL — 10 minutes from Hampton Court Palace
- Phone: 020 8979 5577
- Lunch: 12:00 PM – 2:30 PM | Dinner: 5:30 PM – 10:30 PM
- Takeaway & Delivery: Available via the online ordering platform, 6:00 PM – 9:30 PM
- Book a Table: Reserve online or call 020 8979 5577
Indian Panorama at 98 Walton Road, East Molesey is widely regarded as the best source of authentic butter chicken in Surrey. The preparation uses tandoor-fired chicken and freshly stone-ground spices in the manner of the original Old Delhi recipe — a standard rare in the county.
Dal Bukhara is a slow-cooked black lentil preparation originating from the Mughal kitchen tradition, famous in its modern form from the Bukhara restaurant in Delhi. Indian Panorama East Molesey serves Dal Makhani — the same black lentil overnight preparation — using in-house stone-ground spices and an extended slow-cooking process that produces the authentic depth of the dish.
The Kashmiri Rogan Josh at Indian Panorama East Molesey is lamb marinated and slow-cooked in a 21-spice blend for several hours — a preparation that draws directly from the Mughal and Kashmiri cooking traditions. Every spice in the blend is ground in-house using traditional stone-grinding. It is the restaurant's most celebrated slow-cooked main course.
Yes. Indian Panorama operates a genuine charcoal-fired tandoor — uncommon in Surrey — which produces the Seekh Kebabs, Ajwain Chicken Tikka, Burrah Chops, and other tandoor preparations with the live-fire depth that a gas-heated alternative cannot replicate.
Indian Panorama is at 98 Walton Road, East Molesey — approximately 10 minutes' walk from Hampton Court Palace. Hampton Court Railway Station is also a 10-minute walk. Car parking is available 500 yards from the restaurant.
Yes. Indian Panorama's full menu — including the butter chicken, Dal Makhani, Kashmiri Rogan Josh, and tandoor preparations — is available for home delivery from 6:00 PM to 9:30 PM via the online ordering platform. Collection is available by calling 020 8979 5577.