Doubles and Roti from Danforth Roti

It took maybe a millisecond of convincing from KB for me to get the blog going. Her and I had shared our excitement over Seed, Eat, Repeat being featured on multiple outlets and she followed along as I tirelessly tried to find restaurants in the GTA from every country around the globe. With my particular bias towards finding restaurants that were plant-based or had plant-based options, it's been a wild ride and I still have many countries missing from my handy excel spreadsheet.

The whole process of finding plant-based options has been interesting. As I was searching for places to eat, I realized the ubiquity of chickpeas. Chickpeas were one of the earliest cultivated legumes, growing originally in the Middle East and being featured in South Asian, Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and more recently Caribbean cuisine as a result of colonization. Needless to say - chickpeas are everywhere, and thus I was compelled to name the blog "Around the World with Chickpeas."

Tonight's dinner featured not one, but two chickpea dishes - doubles and channa roti. Perhaps this is an embarrassing admission, but when I was originally looking for Trinidadian restaurants, it hadn't even occurred to me that Danforth Roti is a stone's throw away and prominently features the Trinidad and Tobago flag on it's signpost. Now, before we get into the review, I think it's important to note that I am not well versed in cuisine from the Caribbean. Despite the privileges I have had to live and travel extensively outside of Canada, I have not been to the Caribbean and, perhaps out of the lack of nostalgia that drives my love of food, Caribbean cuisine has never been a feature of my diet.

However, what I love about this challenge of eating from restaurants from around the world is that I'm forced outside of the food I typically eat. Given our take-out only reality, I called in advance to get the owner's recommendation of what to order. In addition to the Doubles, the Channa Roti was recommended as a vegetarian option and Curry Goat as a meat option. Both roti and doubles, like chickpeas, were introduced to Trinidad during colonization and doubles are said to have been inspired by the Punjabi dish, chole bhature.

Having wanted to try Doubles for a while, we both dug in. I don't know what taste I was expecting, but I was expecting the bara (the two flatbreads that hold the channa) to be more similar to bannock or fried naan (if that's even a preparation method that exists). Instead, the bara were soft and flaky. The channa had a subtle curry powder taste, with barely detectable onion and garlic. I am glad I ordered the hottest spiciness level, because the scotch bonnet added an extra kick to an otherwise mildly seasoned dish.

After the doubles (pictured middle), we moved onto the main event -- roti.

Both rotis were wrapped in dhalpuri, a flatbread that's meticulously filled with seasoned split peas. Even trying to conceptually determine how to make this meal blows my mind.

Perhaps my photos don't do it justice, but while my small roti was definitely big enough for one, B's large roti was the size of his head. While he loved the Double, he wasn't blown away by the goat roti. I think it was a mixture between preferring to eat plant-based when eating dishes with curry powder and frankly being surprised by the split peas in the dhalpuri. I loved the texture of the dhalpuri and liked the flavour of the channa, but wasn't savouring every bite the way you hope to in a meal. I will say, both of us changed our tune slightly the next day and both enjoyed the roti more as leftovers; impressed by how the roti held together and how the flavours seemingly melded and enhanced after a few hours in the fridge.

Overall Rating: 7/10 (L - 7.5, B - 6.5)

Main Takeaway: We are absolute novices when it comes to Caribbean cuisine, and so while this wasn't our favourite meal - it may be yours... it may also just be our lunch rather than a dinner! Either way, I'm looking forward to trying other Caribbean and Trini restaurants to find my match.