Quick food made with chickpeas and curry: Trini’s national dish “Roti”
Filed Under articles | Posted on January 2, 2007
Potato Roti - Amins (Couva, Trinidad)
Photo courtesy the lovely and generous Chennette’s Roti Set on Flikr
This article originally appeared on the Caribbean-Sun website. The image links are unfortunately broken however 
I am sharing it ‘as is’ however I wanted to make a few points first 
1. Patraj also has a location in St. James (West Trinidad).
2. I have taken off the annoying accent character they kept putting over Patraj’s name. Unless he is suddenly from the South of France I have no idea how it ended up there!
3. Current inflation makes my memory fuzzy on the idea of a roti for a $6TT
Curry sauce instead of ketchup: Rotis in Trinidad are like hamburgers in the USA. The island?｢どｨび｢s unofficial national dish consists of a delicious curry meal wrapped in thin pastry; its prototype was brought to the Caribbean by Indian immigrants some decades ago. The handy little packets of food have turned into a top seller for a quick snack. But at Siriam Patraj?｢どｨび｢s, Trinidad?｢どｨび｢s uncrowned roti king, the popular dish is treated as a true delicacy.
By Bernhard Grdseloff (C) 2005
Connoisseurs won?｢どｨび｢t hesitate to travel all the way to San Juan, a suburb of Port of Spain, just to get hold of a roti at Patraj?｢どｨび｢s. At carnival, people queue up at the inconspicuous little restaurant as though there was food to be given away. “Actually there are three types of rotis,” the 67-year-old restaurant owner explains. “Sada Roti is served as a side dish, Bussup Shot resembles a cut up pizza, and only for Dhalpouri are the ingredients wrapped up in the dough.”
For the latter popular variety, a ball of dough is filled with ground, split chickpeas, kneaded and rolled out very thinly, and finally baked on a hot stone plate. There are countless different curry fillings to choose from: shrimp, chicken, beef, lamb, mango, pumpkin or capsicum in any combination, mixed with potatoes.
“We use fresh, local ingredients only,” says Patraj, revealing the secret for success of his family-run business. “And despite this, you?｢どｨび｢ll only pay around 6 TT dollars (about 1 US-Dollar) for a roti at my place”.
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6 Responses to “Quick food made with chickpeas and curry: Trini’s national dish “Roti””
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yeah, I read this on the plane…remember thinking “chick peas?” and “cut-up pizza”? Then there’s the “hot stone plate” and sada roti is a “side dish”? Isn’t it just a bread? Actually, if I can resurrect it, on one of those planes where Caribbean Star was losing my luggage, I made notes of their Christmas article…I should post on it
lolz! do
haha
i still don’t understand the cut-up pizza? huh? lolz
making curry pumpkin, place smellin’ nice!
Mmmm pumpkin and barfi…wooohooo!
A bit of a sugar high today?
my tummy hurts
*pat pat*
Hi Sarina,
My co-worker brings it in regularly for his lunch and it looks so good. In anycase, I would love to have it with lamb or mango…Yum!
Oh wow really?!
You must definitely buy some 
I’ll be sharing some recipes for it in the near future 
Mango is a popular filling in vegetarian rotis here 
Mango with pumpkin and chickpeas and potatos… SO good 
Lamb rotis are also available 
again…. so good!
Am watching Michael Lomonaco’s Epicurious
I heart him! 