Order your butter chicken at Curry and Clay Oven on Langston Boulevard, and it arrives in just a few minutes. But it has taken hours to produce the myriad of sauces and marinade that produce the final dish.

Chef Raythan Choduri says that butter chicken is one of the customer favorites as well as the chicken masala, and it is one of his favorites, too. Of course he also likes the lamb curry and biryani.

The large white meat chicken chunks have been marinated overnight in yogurt and masala, a common go-to Indian spice. His uncle, Mohammed Rashed, part of the family business, is in charge of the kabobs.“We put them on a skewer and bake them in the clay oven at 200 degrees.” Then they will be set aside and ready to add to the butter sauce.

Choduri heats a small aluminum skillet and slips in some Jones Farm vegan butter. Then he tosses in the chopped garlic that sends a flame rocketing toward the ceiling. After a short sauté, Choduri adds a large ladle of tomato sauce from the selection of multiple aluminum sauce containers lining the back of the counter. The tomato sauce has been cooked slowly a couple of hours with butter and masala.  

Next goes in a scoop of onion sauce—puréed white onions sautéed with ginger garlic, masala and some tomato puree. It has cooked slowly, then been tasted and probably cooked some more. Finally some cashew puree, a little salt and a little masala. 

“If you like it spicy, we add chili powder.” But Choduri’s brother and a partner in the business, Khled Oyalid, explains they have a customer family that doesn’t like the taste of chili powder, “so we add green chilis for them.” He says they can modify their dishes to suit their customers. Choduri adds about a tablespoon of granulated sugar and a couple of drops of yellow food coloring.

The skillet goes back on the burner on high heat. Choduri adds the chicken kabobs to the sauce and swirls the pan around for about two minutes. He spoons the mixture into a dish and sprinkles on freshly chopped coriander and mezzi. “This is ready.” It is plated up with a helping of freshly steamed rice.

Near the stove a large pan of dough the size of a wash tub sits rising ready to make about 75 naan. Oyalid explains they make about 145-200 naan a day. This pan has 5 pounds of flour, yogurt, milk, baking powder, sugar and salt and will be ready in a minute to produce small balls of dough. 

“We line the balls up on a tray and put them in the refrigerator to keep cool. When we have an order, we take out the balls of dough and flatten with our hands and then a rolling pin on a floured surface.”

Oyalid slaps a piece of flat dough against the wall of the deep clay oven where it will bake for about 15 minutes until the crust is brown and crackling. Oyalid then slices the hot naan, puts a pat of butter on top to melt in and places the naan in a basket ready to serve. 

An order of samosas takes its turn in the hot oil. An order of fish curry comes in. Choduri says, “You have to concentrate on a lot of things at once.” 

Oyalid says he cooks too. “But my brother is the main chef. He is teaching me a lot of things, how to make lamb, how to make sauce.”

Chef Choduri got his start in a kitchen in Columbia, Maryland where 

he was a dishwasher for a month but quickly moved on to cutting everything — meat, vegetables. “I love to cook and people like to eat good food.” He learned everything as he moved up. Later he worked at the Jewel of India in Silver Spring where he says he prepared many different things. While he was there he created several meals for the President of India who was visiting in Washington D.C. After two more years working in a vegetarian restaurant he and his brother opened Curry and Clay Oven in Arlington.