HYDERABAD: Every place has its favourite set of street foods, like the stuffed paratha from Delhi or Vada Pav from Mumbai. Kolkata is known for its trademark roll, a sumptuous snack where chicken or mutton pieces sautéed with onions and masala are rolled inside a layered and flaky paratha, and served wrapped in thin paper. The snack was conceived by a small restaurant named Nizam’s near Hogg Market, Kolkata about eighty years ago, arguably as food to be consumed on the go.
Initially it was known as kathi roll, because kebabs inside the rolls were charcoal grilled on wooden sticks or “kathi”. However, over the decades, as the snack became increasingly popular and roll centres mushroomed all over the city, partially cooked meat finished on a tawa started mostly being used instead of kebabs. A large variety of rolls have evolved in the last couple of decades with eggs added to the paratha, and a vegetarian version using potato or paneer as stuffing. The trend of using tomato or chilli sauces in the filling have also become common, much to the dismay of a puritan like me. One of the reasons of popularity of this street food is that it can serve as a utility lunch, evening snack or dinner. You can customise your roll by adding more layers to it, starting from a simple chicken roll and scaling up to the double egg double chicken version.
It is fascinating to see a Kolkata style roll being prepared right in front of you. Freshly rolled out layered and flaky paratha is fried in oil on a tawa. For an egg roll, egg is added on the paratha while frying. The filling is prepared separately with meat, onion, optionally veggies like capsicum or cucumber, and a masala – for the last one many shops have their own proprietary versions. Then the paratha is deftly rolled with this filling, and sauces, lime, chopped chillies and dry masala added as per customer specification.
In Hyderabad, the Kolkata style rolls have been popularised by Roll Call, that started as a kiosk selling rolls in Madhapur from 2002. They now have roll centres all over the city. Jayeeta Majumdar Singhee, one of the partners at Roll Call mentioned that apart from the authentic rolls from Kolkata, they have also introduced spicy versions like Chicken and Paneer 65 rolls for the local Hyderabadi palate. Overall, they have around 30 variants of rolls with versions like cheese rolls, seekh kebab rolls and reshmi kebab rolls and the rolls are also easy on the pockets priced at `50-100 range. Roll Durbar in Gachibowli, Amantran in Domalguda and Kolkata House in Kondapur are some other places to enjoy Kolkata style rolls.