Sally's Roti Shop

Sally learned how to make roti by watching her mother in Trinidad, and moved to the Kingston area in 1988 with that recipe line already settled. For years she cooked for friends and family, the way a household kitchen does — doubles for somebody who stopped by, a curry going on the stove in the afternoon, dhalpuri rolled out on a counter at home. In 2014 she and her husband Bobby opened Sally's Roti Shop on Wellington Street, a small Trinidadian counter in the Old Sydenham core where the menu is the menu she had already been cooking. The recipe line did not change when the storefront opened — the dough is still the dough, the spice is still hers — but the room around it did, and so did the rhythm.

The opening move is doubles: curried chickpeas tucked between two soft fried patties, eaten by hand in two or three bites and the first thing to order. Phulorie sit beside them on the snack side — soft dough balls sold by the twenty with the chutney of choice — and pull the same dough work into a shareable second order. The curry roti lineup runs through goat, chicken, lamb, beef, shrimp, chickpeas, squash, and eggplant and spinach. Each one is wrapped in homemade dhalpuri with curried potatoes folded into the same parcel, and jerk chicken is the one exception that goes without the potato. The same curries come as plates instead of wraps when the table wants a knife and fork, with rice and peas, potatoes, and coleslaw set beside the curry rather than tucked into it.