Roti: A traveller(Day 3/500)

What’s Roti Anyway? A Global Journey of a Simple Flatbread

I still remember the first time I heard about “roti” outside of India. It was back in 2021 when I visited Rotterdam with my girlfriend Saskia. We were meeting her friend Emma, and she told us about this really cool dish called roti — apparently super popular and coming from Suriname. My first reaction was, “Wait, what(not where) the heck is Suriname?” Turns out, it’s a small country in South America(scuza!).

Emma showed us the roti there — a flatbread, kind of like the roti I grew up eating, but still quite different. It blew my mind that two places on opposite sides of the world ended up calling their flatbread with the same name. Only later did I learn why.

So, what exactly is roti? Well, it’s originally a simple flatbread from the Indian subcontinent. The word itself comes from the Sanskrit word rotika, which just means bread. Traditionally, roti is made with different whole wheat flour, water, and salt — no fancy stuff like yeast. The dough is rolled into thin discs and cooked on a flat pan called a tawa. It’s usually broken by hand and eaten with veggies, lentils, or curries.

But roti isn’t just one thing — there are loads of different evolutions. For example:

• Paratha: a layered, flaky roti

• Aloo Paratha: stuffed with spiced potatoes

• Kerala Parotta: a softer, flakier version from southern India

• Puri: a deep-fried, puffed-up versionEven Mangalore has its own twist with Mangalore buns — a sweet, banana-flavored fried bread.

Interestingly, the tandoor oven came from Persia centuries ago, bringing breads like naan and here people also created Tandoori Roti.

The Global Roti Adventure: Migration and Colonies

When Indians were taken to work in colonies by the British, they brought roti with them — and it evolved in different ways:

• In Sri Lanka, roti is made from wheat, coconut, and millet. There’s even kottu roti — chopped up roti stir-fried with spices and veggies, similar to roti poha in North India.

• In Southeast Asia, you’ll find roti canai (inspired by Kerala parotta), often served sweet with bananas and condensed milk in places like Thailand.

• In South Africa and Mauritius, roti became part of local dishes, mixing Indian techniques with local flavors.

• The Caribbean developed dhalpuri, a lentil-stuffed roti used to wrap curries. Over time, “roti” there started to mean the whole wrap and just the outer covering started to be called Roti shell. In the 1970s, many Surinamese people (with Indian roots) moved to the Netherlands, bringing their version of roti with them. Now roti is a staple in Dutch cities. Isn't it crazy how things move from one place to another and a lot of times, we think that it just belongs there for forever. But maybe it does, alteast in our version of forever!