A Look Into How Kati Rolls Came to Be

I grew up eating kati rolls. I adulted eating kati rolls. Many foodies and fellow South Asians here in NYC know what kati rolls are. Eater NY and The Infatuation know what kati rolls are. This is all to say I just assumed the vast majority of people knew what kati rolls are. And I promise you I don’t mean that in a hoity-toity way, looking down my nose at the kati roll unversed. It’s just that I hadn’t realized how insular my kati roll bubble was until I started selling my own vegan rolls earlier this year.

During these events, I had to explain to my well-meaning patrons that no, kati rolls are not my attempt at creating niche Indian-Mexican fusion food. I also had to explain that no, kati rolls are not Indian burritos. Yes, kati rolls are traditional South Asian street food. No, I did not invent kati rolls (I wish) nor was I the first one to expose NYC to kati rolls (also I kinda wish). I was simply veganzing an iconic street food.

All these interactions got me thinking that maybe it was worth defining what traditional kati rolls are and their presence in my life personally but also, in India and then NYC.

So before we go any further down memory lane, let’s define what kati roll and rolls are.

The word “kati” is Bengali for “stick” and refers to the skewers used to cook meat (like chicken, goat, lamb, and beef) kebabs. Kebabs are unthreaded in a paratha, topped with chutney, onions and/or lightly pickled veggies, and rolled. When it doesn’t have kebabs in it, and the filling consists of eggs, paneer, or vegetable fillings, and thus no kati was used, it is usually referred to as just rolls.

Now let’s time travel.

I moved to NYC in 2005 to attend culinary school at FCI and hone my cooking skills while eating my way through the city, with a special penchant for Indian street food. I was making up for lost time. Growing up in Nashville and attending college in Memphis, Tennessee wasn’t exactly a breeding ground for Indian restaurants, neither in quantity and not even in quality (mind you these were pre-Maneet Chauhan days).

Out of all the Indian food I had in my early days in NYC, my most prized experience was having access to kati rolls, an Indian street food that, before moving to NYC, I would only get during my family’s yearly visits to Bhubaneswar (BBSR), Odisha.

No trip to BBSR was complete without me begging relatives to take me, usually on their scooter, to a kati roll stall to have more than my fair share of egg (unda roll), chicken (unda chicken roll), and/or mutton rolls; I’d wash it all down with either a Thums Up or Frooti depending on that day’s whim or what was afforded to me from the good graces of my relatives.

To me, kati rolls were synonymous with India and vice versa, it was so closely linked to comfort in both the familial and gastronomic sense.

My India Fam would poke fun at me saying that my parents hadn’t immigrated to the USA to have me be a kati roll wala, my interest, I guess, being latent to those around me.

The taste of those rolls was and still are, even as a vegan, imprinted on my taste buds. The buttery flakiness of paratha. The layer of unda, or egg, that enrobed it. The tender meats were topped with onions that were bedded and blanketed by the egg-laden pillowy paratha.

Now let’s cut back to NYC. One of the places that quickly captured my heart and tastebids when I moved here was the rolls of The Kati Roll Company. It closely resembled what I remember savoring in BBSR: juicy, marinated mutton or chicken kebabs wrapped snugly in a flaky paratha.

The Kati Roll Company’s Greenwich village outpost – with its kitschy Bollywood-painted walls, became a stomping ground of mine throughout my years here. To not have to wait and have kati rolls in the homeland, to be able to get kati rolls whenever I wanted was dreamy! Kati rolls had just arrived in NYC a few years before I had and I was benefitting from its proliferation here in the city.

Kati rolls punctuated many a Manhattan night. I’d either fill up on rolls as an inexpensive dinner before going out OR as a go-to meal after nights of debauchery.

I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit that on more than one occasion, I would bookend my nights with rolls: start the night off with one type of roll — say unda- and then go out, party, be young and delightfully shady and then find myself right back there, ending my night with a shami kebab roll to soak up all bad choices of the night.

Throughout the years, it punctuated not just the nights but the days, too; I would pick up rolls for park outings, treat myself to rolls on my lunch break, or pick them up and eat them on the go when I was an intern. I’d take out-of-towners to The Kati Roll Company for what I considered to be authentic and memorable Indian street food.

As the years went on, I saw other Indian restaurants, notable ones like Desi Gali and Masala Times carve a place on their menus for delectable kati rolls as well. Kati rolls had entered the pantheon of Indian street proliferated in NYC, no longer relegated to the menu of few desi establishments; rather the 2000s (gee, I sound old) saw numerous South Asian restaurants have several types of kati rolls on their menus. Several kati rolls, sure. Even innovative, yes!
Vegetarian rolls even? You bet! Vegan kati rolls? Notsomuch. But not having vegan rolls didn’t really concern me .. until it did.

When I became vegan 4 years ago, choosing NOT to consume them, proved to be challenging for me. Vegans can get online hate when we admit, out loud, that we confess missing meat and/or dairy. But the truth is, I did.

I don’t miss animal proteins and dairy as a broad category, but I did miss the kati roll. Perhaps I missed it because kati rolls are synonymous with comfort and culture; they hold a special place in my food memories, first during childhood visits to India and then as an adult here in NYC.

Afterall, food memories can be evocative in that they engage multiple senses and are linked to emotions. Or maybe it isn’t that deep? Maybe kati rolls taste good to me, because, like many people, I love(d) buttery flatbread with savory, spiced meat.

Even though I have a culinary background, I didn’t intuitively know which plant based butters, eggs, and meat could bring me back into my happy roll place. But I conducted recipe test after test and replicated the soft tender paratha mouthfeel that is signature to paratha rolls. I played around with numerous plant-based eggs and meats, along with tofu and veggies to try and replicate kati rolls as I remembered them. The testing still isn’t over. I’m still tweaking, geeking, and rolling deep. But I feel confident enough to share my version with my community.

Now knowing my love affair with kati rolls you’ll perhaps better understand why, when it came to launching my own concept, I led with kati rolls. It wasn’t from any market study or thinking that I had landed on some revolutionary idea because, lets be real, I hadnt! Kati rolls, as you’ve probably already gathered, is not a new concept or dish, neither in India nor here in NYC.

It would be unfair for me to say that there are NO vegan kati rolls in NYC because, here’s the thing, there are.

However, many vegan iterations use roti instead of paratha because traditional paratha recipes use animal products such as dairy, butter, and/or ghee; roti doesn’t, so it’s an easy swap for places that make both. But roti just hits differently. It doesn’t have all the riches, all the fat, and thus layers, of paratha.

Also, vegan Kati rolls here in the city seldom use vegan meats as the filling. Rather, they contain chickpeas and potatoes or other vegetables rolled in a roti, which, yummy as it still is, still doesn’t taste meaty or like a similar replication of traditional kati rolls.

I figured I couldn’t be the only one who missed meaty kati rolls and wanted a vegan version of buttery paratha and spiced meat mouthfeel that mimics the kati rolls I grew up eating in BBSR and then NYC. So, I held tastings and events over this past summer to share my vegan kati rolls with my community.

As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention. Perhaps this adage does not apply to me as I don’t need vegan kati rolls. But I sure as hell wanted them. So perhaps in my case, desire is the mother of all invention. But as we’ll see, kati rolls were spawned by necessity when we explore why and how they came into existence.

Picture this: It’s the 1930s in Kolkata. The streets are buzzing, people are hustling, and everyone’s hungry. Enter Nizam’s restaurant, the culinary savior India hadn’t anticipated it needed.

Faced with the challenge of feeding ravenous workers who needed something quick, portable, and absolutely delectable, the Nizam’s staff had a eureka moment. The solution? Wrap those juicy, perfectly spiced kebabs in a flaky, golden paratha. Voilà, the kati roll was born! This wasn’t just a meal; it was a revolution in a wrap. It was like the culinary gods said, “Let there be street food that’s both convenient and mouthwateringly delicious,” and Nizam’s delivered. And just like that, Kolkata’s street food scene would never be the same. Scratch that, India’s street food scene would never be the same.

Still, others point toward lore, indicating that it was the British, and not any such eureka moment, that had to do with the kati rolls coming into existence. According to Atlas Obscura:

At the time of the kati roll’s conception, Kolkata was the capital of the British Empire. The story goes that British patrons did not want to eat kebabs with their hands, so someone at Nizam’s decided to roll the meat up in a paratha–a crispy, buttery unleavened flatbread–and then serve it in a paper wrapper.

Initially, these rolls were filled with mutton and chicken kebabs (and by some accounts, even beef in its early days!), each marinated in spices that could wake the dead. Well, Kolkata’s Nizam’s gift to the culinary world didn’t stay secret for long. Soon, cities across India were rolling with the goodness of kati rolls, each adding its own twist. From Mumbai’s Frankie roll to Delhi’s Khan Chacha roll, these regional adaptations bear little resemblance to the original Nizami roll from Kolkata.

So how did the stuff of legend from the 30’s in Western India enjoy so much fanfare in Manhattan in the 2000s? Let’s keep rolling.

The popularity of kati rolls in Kolkata, and then all of India, set the stage for their international journey, eventually arriving in New York City, where diverse culinary influences thrive.

The vibrant flavors and convenient format of kati rolls made them a natural fit for New Yorkers on the go. As these savory rolls crossed oceans and continents, they retained their authenticity yet appealed to the cosmopolitan palate of NYC, all thanks to Payal Saha.

In 2002, Saha embarked on a mission to introduce kati rolls to New Yorkers by opening the first outlet of The Kati Roll Company. Her nostalgic yearning motivated Saha; she missed her Kolkata food, specifically kati rolls. So, she experimented with recipes to capture the authenticity one could only find in India. Once she perfected her recipes, she opened The Kati Roll Company, which also capitalized on the fast-casual dining scene emerging in NYC. The rest, as they say, was history.

Initially, the eatery focused on catering to students and the late-night, after-party crowd. Well, the strategic decision to target nocturnal New York demographic paid off handsomely. The blend of authentic Indian flavors with a convenient format quickly caught on, and The Kati Roll Company soon became a favorite haunt for those seeking a quick yet satisfying meal.

As word of The Kati Roll Company’s offerings spread, the kati roll craze gripped Manhattan. The company’s menu, brimming with variety, offered something for every palate, but the Achari Paneer Roll and Chicken Tikka Roll stood out as undeniable crowd-pleasers.
These bestsellers became the talk of the town, drawing both locals and tourists eager to experience the flavors of India right in the heart of New York City. The success of these signature rolls was a testament to The Kati Roll Company’s ability to captivate taste buds and cement its place as a culinary staple

The Kati Roll Company lead the way for other restaurants to to put kati rolls on their menus. It even spawned alleged copy cats and lawsuits.

You can find kati rolls in just about every part of Manhattan: Upper West Side, Upper East Side, East Village, and West Village, and everywhere in between. Kati rolls also extend Manhattan into other boroughs, and while we’re talking about it, other cities across the USA!

The dreamy kati lover in me hopes that I can do for plant-based kati rolls what Saha did for bringing kati roll culture to NYC, and what Nizam’s did for innovating Indian street food.

When I write it out like this, sure, it seems like a rather lofty goal. But at the very least, I just want to give people delicious plant-based kati rolls so like me, one can continue to enjoy the foods from their personal and cultural pasts without compromising taste or the textures that many of us have come to know as boldly Indian.