In 1957, an unlettered man, L Nagasamy Naidu opened a small biriyani eatery at Big Bazaar Street in rural Dindigul district and named it Ananda Vilas Biriyani Hotel. Today his dishes lure food connoisseurs, who wish to ‘spice up’ their appetite, from far and wide. Parcels of the biriyani are even taken overseas. Yet, Ananda Vilas Biriyani doesn’t ring a bell. Instead, mention ‘Dindigul Thalappakatti Biriyani’, and people instantly relate to it.
So successful is Naidu’s ‘Thalappakatti’ biriyani that in Chennai, a food chain capitalised on the brand name and opened as many as 68 eateries since 2005 with their name boards screaming ‘Thalappakattu Biriyani’. Later an inconspicuous prefix ‘Rawther’ was added to the Chennai-based chain to differentiate it from the original Dindigul outlet on a direction from the Madras High Court.
On Friday, Naidu’s grandson D Nagasamy alias Satheesh, won a long drawn battle to retain the trademark ‘Thalappakatti’ with the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB) ruling that the Chennai-based Rawther Thalappakattu had dishonestly laid stake to the name.
There is an interesting tale behind the evolution of Ananda Vilas Biriyani Hotel into Thalappakatti Biriyani Hotel. “My grandfather always sported a turban. So, the local people casually referred to him as ‘Thalappakatti’ Naidu (in Tamil turban is called Thalappa) and soon our eatery itself was identified as ‘Thalappakatti Biriyani’,” says Satheesh.
But it was not until the mushrooming of the Rawther Thalappakattu Biriyani that Satheesh himself realised how popular his grandfather’s recipe was.
Only three years after the Chennai eateries became a hit, Satheesh opened the first Dindigul Thalappakatti Restaurant in Chennai and used his grandfather’s photo in the logo. Before that outside Dindigul, only one outlet existed- in Coimbatore.
“Today, we serve 12 varieties of biriyani including chicken, mutton, egg, prawn, crab, kadai (quail), fish, butter, panneer and nattu kozhi (country chicken) ,” says P V Nagendran, manager of the outlet in Dindigul.
Nagendran says the Dindigul outlet serves only biriyani whereas in Chennai parotta, dosa and other dishes are also made. Satheesh says it was not easy to get the trademark for his family business. “We won a case against the Rawther chain in the Madras HC and SC. Later, they approached the IPAB which dismissed their application with `20,000 cost,” he says. The third generation owner hopes now the Rawther chain would close shop. “We have 16 outlets including 12 in Chennai. In the next 20 months, I hope to launch seven branches including one in New Delhi and another in Bangalore,” says Satheesh.