When Columbus arrived in the Americas, he stubbornly decided to call the native inhabitants “Indians,” despite the fact that he was nowhere near his intended South Asian destination. Centuries later, when actual Indians were brought to the West Indies as indentured servants, they took their cooking with them, and it has significantly influenced the food of countries like Trinidad and Tobago. The result: dishes with Indian roots, like curried stewed goat and roti, thousands of miles from their country of origin.
At Ali’s Trinidad Roti Shop, you can get that stew and others wrapped in the namesake roti, an unleavened flatbread with a wonderfully elastic pull. Wrapping the meat inside the roti is how it’s sold as street food in Trinidad, which is how I always ate it at Brooklyn’s annual West Indian Day Parade, a raucous festival that bumps, booms, and bops down Eastern Parkway every Labor Day. Ali’s version, which you order at the Plexiglas window, then eat at one of the few tables or carry out, does not disappoint.
