You can now buy a roti panini at Lidl, and I have something to say about that

I love Lidl, and I love Surinamese and Italian cuisine. But that doesn’t immediately make for a delicious threesome. Because a Surinamese roti on an Italian panini, now available at Lidl, is surely even worse than a Hawaiian pizza?! 

It’s ‘Caribbean Week’ at Lidl. Reason enough for the supermarket to go all out with Caribbean products. Corn fritters, Caribbean spices, filled empanadas, Surinamese egg cake mix… And of course roti. IN A PANINI?! Whoa. Stop. What is going wrong here?

Roti, typically Surinamese (or is it?)

When you think of Surinamese cuisine, you quickly think of roti. For many Dutch people, roti is a typically Surinamese dish, but it originally comes from India. Hindustani indentured laborers introduced roti to Surinamese cuisine. And how! Roti is an incredible hit. Surinamese people love roti, and so do a great many Dutch people (me, me!).

A crazy idea

Roti technically refers to all forms of flatbread, but in Suriname, and here too, roti is synonymous with the entire dish. But a panini?! It has no place here, just as filling a roti flatbread with mozzarella, pesto, and tomato is a crazy idea. And of course the name doesn’t make sense either, because strictly speaking, roti panini means ‘flatbread bread roll’…

Fusion confusion

I’m not the only one who thinks so, by the way. The roti panini is also available at Albert Heijn, and apparently some people had already suffered a stroke over the sandwich. ‘I’m offering myself up to share my knowledge of roti with you,’ a concerned customer wrote to Albert Heijn in 2019, after which he received a message from the supermarket chain confirming that the roti panini is indeed ‘a textbook example of fusion confusion.’ ‘Somewhere between Italy and Suriname, something evidently went wrong,’ Albert Heijn continued in its response, but the hilarious sandwich is still on the shelves (for €2.49). And now it’s also available, at an extra bargain price, at Lidl (for €2.19), because it’s so deliciously Caribbean.

Don’t mess with other people’s food

Now you may be thinking: ‘don’t be so dramatic, what does it matter if it tastes good? Don’t be so woke.’ But it does matter, says Jonneke, a.k.a. Mooncake. Jonneke knows better than anyone how good the Netherlands’ new, diverse culinary landscape looks right now. Jonneke: ‘Food is culture and identity. So when you mess with someone’s food, you’re messing with their identity. What I find striking is that people keep acting as if there’s no one living here who knows what roti is. Even though we live in a completely different country than we did a hundred years ago. It’s high time we truly embraced that. And that takes more than simply eating each other’s food.’

No cutlery, but roti flatbread

You eat roti with your hands, by the way. More specifically: you tear off pieces of your roti plate (or roti flatbread) and use them to pick up the side dishes – yardlong beans, potato, hard-boiled egg, and chicken (or other meat or fish). You then dip it into the masala sauce. Would you still like to eat roti as a sandwich? Then a Surinamese white bread roll would make much more sense, but better yet: a roti roll, in which you place the filling with sauce on your roti flatbread and roll and fold the whole thing like a spring roll. But roti in a panini? Nooooooo!

Buying roti flatbreads

Because seriously: the foundation of every good roti is a delicious roti plate. The flatbread and the filling belong together like fries and mayo. Making such a roti plate yourself is a truly tantoe lot of work. My mother-in-law taught me that you can buy roti flatbreads at any toko; just always ask for fresh ones. And why not make roti yourself sometime? In the wonderful cookbook Paramaribo by Judith Cyrus, you’ll find a few delicious recipes.

The best roti in Amsterdam

Not up for cooking yourself? Of course, you can also buy FANTASTIC roti in many places. Real roti! Roti so delicious you’ll want to eat your fingers. These are my 7 favorite places for Surinamese food in 020. So leave the roti panini well alone and go for the real deal. Because good roti is irresistible!

And recently, Jonneke’s second book appeared: All inclusive aan de keukentafel – een culinair pamflet voor alle Nederlanders. A book about where this country comes from, where we stand now, why that’s fantastic, but also where things clash and rub, and how they could improve. A culinary tribute to all the inhabitants of this country, with confusing fusion dishes…

Read also:

• Delivery review: the delivered meal from Floor’s Surinamese catering service
• Family recipe: bara from star chef Soenil Bahadoer
• Recipe: Surinamese telo with peanut sambal