A social media influencer and YouTuber, Sarthak Sachdeva, had recently dined at Gauri Khan's high-end restaurant, Torii, in Mumbai.
In a now viral video, he mentioned that the paneer in the dish he had eaten at the famous restaurant was 'fake' and it contained starch.
The restaurant is owned and run by the entrepreneur and interior designer wife of Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan.
Sarthak Sachdeva, in his video, alleged that the paneer served to him at Torii contained starch, which is a marker of adulteration, according to him.
In the video, Sarthak is seen testing an iodine tincture on a piece of paneer served to him at the high-end, celebrity-owned restaurant he frequently visits for his content series. When the iodine was applied to the paneer, it became black and blue, which is a typical test for detecting starch.
Sarthak responded to the color shift by declaring, "Shah Rukh Khan ke restaurant mein paneer nakli tha. Ye dekhke mere toh hosh udd gaye the."
And to test further, Sarthak also visited other celebrity-owned restaurants in Mumbai—Virat Kohli’s One8 Commune, Shilpa Shetty’s Bastian and Bobby Deol’s Someplace Else—to examine the quality of the paneer being served.
He said he used the same iodine test, but none of the paneer samples from those outlets turned black.
The video has now gone viral and it led the Torii team to respond.
Commenting on the video, the restaurant wrote, “The iodine test reflects the presence of starch, not the authenticity of the paneer. As the dish contains soy-based ingredients, this reaction is expected. We stand by the purity of our paneer and the integrity of our ingredients at Torii."
Sarthak, while maintaining a cheeky tone, replied, “So am I banned now? BTW, your food is amazing. "
Dr. Kiran Soni, head of the Department of Nutrition and Health at Yatharth Hospital, Greater Noida, told HT Lifestyle that though the iodine tincture test does detect starch, it doesn’t necessarily confirm whether paneer is fake.
"Since pure paneer is made from milk proteins and does not naturally contain starch, an iodine test that results in a color change could indicate the presence of synthetic or adulterated paneer," she told HT Lifestyle in an old interview.
However, Dr. Soni also mentioned that commercial paneer makers occasionally add starch to improve texture or weight.
Furthermore, batter coating or soy-based components may mislead the iodine test findings. "A dark color reaction does not automatically mean the paneer is entirely artificial; it could simply be mixed with starch," she further explained.
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