Rolled out in kitchens across the Indian subcontinent, roti has remained a humble flatbread that has travelled far and wide in tiffins and memories, surviving displacement, scarcity, and change. It moved in the hands of traders, sailors, migrants, and indentured labourers — its shape shifting with every border it crossed. Even in its earliest forms, roti wasn’t just sustenance; it was a migrant story. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, after the abolition of slavery, Britain sent over 1.3 million Indian indentured labourers to far-flung colonies — about 145,000 to Trinidad alone between 1845 and 1917. Alongside clothes and keepsakes, they carried recipes and muscle memory: the instinct to make something familiar in an unfamiliar land.
Where wheat was scarce, they improvised. In the Caribbean, that meant lentils — giving rise to dhalpuri, roti stuffed with split peas and blistered on a hot plate. In Malaysia, Indian Muslim migrants known as mamak stretched dough into roti canai, paired with dhal or sweetened condensed milk. Even Mexico’s tortilla, though corn-based, echoes roti’s logic of adaptability: a flatbread shaped by the land it’s made on. What this really shows is that roti’s evolution has always been tied to power — who moves, who adapts, and whose foodways get preserved or erased.
Culinary Power and Ownership: Who Gets to Tell the Story?
Today, Indian cuisine means different things in different parts of the world. In London, it may appear on a tasting menu; in Trinidad, in a lunchtime wrap; in Kuala Lumpur, at breakfast. This diversity hints at the breadth of Indian food’s migration — but also reveals who gets celebrated and who gets edited out of the frame.
In some Western dining spaces, Indian flavours are reframed as modern or refined, often with little acknowledgement of the histories they carry. British chef Tom Kerridge’s £28 Butter Chicken, for instance, reflects its market and audience, yet became a talking point because of how casually it detached a dish rooted in Delhi homes and dhabas from its cultural context. For many, the issue wasn’t the reinvention — it was the idea of presenting it at a luxury price point without any real nod to where it came from. On supermarket shelves, boutique spice brands continue to favour polished packaging even as conversations about sourcing and credit grow more urgent with the rise of diaspora-led brands.
Of the few Michelin-recognised Indian restaurants in the world, many sit outside India — a reminder that global prestige often arrives only when Indian cuisine is filtered through Western institutions. London alone has multiple Michelin-starred Indian restaurants, while India has none under the official Michelin Guide, which still doesn’t operate in the country. The symbolism writes itself.
At the same time, borrowing isn’t a one-way street. Indian chefs reinterpret French pâtisserie, Japanese matcha, and New York bagels, layering their own histories onto global forms. The question isn’t whether adaptation is allowed — it’s whether the origin story stays visible, and whether those who shaped a dish have a seat at the table when its value is determined.
Reception and Reality
The flavours may be the same, but the reception rarely is. Restaurants serving “elevated Indian street food” often draw critical attention, while Indian-run dhabas offering similar dishes are rarely spotlighted. Part of this is access — who can secure prime real estate, hire PR, or design spaces that match fine-dining expectations. Part of it is perception: dishes become more “approachable” when plated minimally, spiced subtly, and narrated through a Western frame.
Economically, the landscape mirrors this. The market for Indian packaged foods and spices has grown rapidly, with diaspora-led brands driving global curiosity. Those who control the narrative often control the profits, too.
But these tensions exist within the diaspora as well. A Trinidadian dhalpuri won’t taste like a Punjabi roti, yet both carry the same emotional resonance for those who grew up eating them. Authenticity becomes a question of belonging rather than purity: who decides what counts, and what gets preserved?
Preserving and Redefining Roti Across Borders
Despite all its migrations and reinventions, roti is still rolled out each morning — soft, warm, familiar. Picture a grandmother in Port of Spain dusting flour off her palms, or a student in London making roti on a tiny stovetop because it tastes like home. For many, cooking it is an act of remembrance. For others, it’s the start of experimentation. Across the globe, chefs, home cooks, and street vendors add to roti’s atlas of identities, each version shaped by history, geography, and personal taste.
In the end, roti’s story isn’t about drawing hard lines between “pure” and “changed.” It’s about recognising that every flatbread — whether folded around curry in Trinidad, flipped in a Malaysian street stall, or plated in a New York bistro — carries the imprint of the hands that made it and the landscapes it travelled through. The challenge is making sure those hands and landscapes aren’t forgotten when the dish arrives at the table.
