The petitioner’s kebabs and the defendant’s kebabs. Pictures by Naeem Ansari

Lucknow, Sept. 26: One of the two rival kebab chains is like Test cricket, underlining the virtue of patience as a faithful clientele marked by many elderly faces queues outside its cramped, 100-year-old flagship eatery.

The other is an upstart like T20, its air-conditioned and gleaming restaurants — some of them set in malls and sporting glass windows — drawing mostly the younger generation.

Like the two formats of the 22-yard game, both the patriarch and the teenaged challenger that toppled it off its No. 1 perch five years ago share the same brand name. And that’s what has pitted Lucknow’s top two kebab chains against each other in a lawsuit.

Tunde Ke Kebab, in its centenary year, has accused Tunday Kebabi, of 1999 vintage, of stealing its brand and demanded Rs 50 crore in compensation. Adding spice to the meaty controversy is the whiff of a dynastic duel, with both contestants claiming descent from a legendary chef who was robbed of an arm in an accident while flying a kite.

“Tunde”, slang for “one-armed”, was the nickname that stuck to Haji Murad Ali, who opened the original Tunde Ke Kebab in the Chowk area in 1914.

Plaintiff Mohammad Muslim, 68, who owns the old eatery and four new ones that share the brand name, claims Ali was his maternal grandfather once removed.

Defendant Mohammad Usman, 65, owner of more than 40 Tunday Kebabis, mostly across Uttar Pradesh, claims his 88-year-old father was Ali’s adopted son. He accuses Muslim of being a foreigner who fraudulently grabbed what should have been Usman’s inheritance.

Muslim moved a petition on Monday at a city civil court alleging: “He (Usman) launched a chain of kebab outlets without obtaining any legal authority from the original franchise.”

The case is scheduled to be heard tomorrow.

“I am a direct descendant of Haji Murad Ali. We have been running Tunde Ke Kebab for 100 years. Usman has no right over the brand as he does not belong to the family,” Muslim told a TV channel.

“Muslim is actually from Saudi Arabia,” alleged Usman, who has six outlets in Lucknow and is now expanding into Mumbai and Bangalore.

“He is fraudulently using the Tunde Ke Kebab brand name. I’ll prove that in court. I built my brand independently and through sheer hard work and skill.”

Sources in the Associated Chambers Of Commerce and Industry of Uttar Pradesh, which carried out a study on the state’s kebab chains two years ago, said Tunday had begun clipping Tunde’s lead from the year 2000. By 2009, it had overtaken its rival and was now far ahead.

Asked why he had waited so long to move his suit, Muslim said: “For 14 years, Usman kept promising to change his company’s name. Then I took the matter to trade bodies but nothing came out of it.”

He added: “I had to wait further because Usman moved cases against me, accusing me of taking over my maternal grandfather’s business illegally. I won these cases, establishing myself as the son of a daughter of Ali’s brother.”

Sources said Muslim had years ago approached Assocham for an amicable solution but Usman took the matter to Allahabad High Court, which asked him to move a lower court. As the battle drags on, Usman has been opening one new outlet after another.

The newest Tunday, a swank three-storey building that came up in the Aliganj neighbourhood last month, is already a weekend hit with well-to-do families and young professionals. It charges Rs 250 for a plate of kebabs.

But poets and academics nostalgic about the city’s past seem to prefer the Tunde at Chowk, as do some among the younger crowd too. Its prices are cheaper at Rs 200.

Asked for an outsider’s perspective, a Calcutta film star who was here in March for a shoot and visited both chains’ outlets declined to choose between them, at least in the matter of culinary excellence.

“I couldn’t find any significant difference. The taste was equally good at both,” he told this newspaper.