Chakalaka Roll

The Chakalaka Roll is a child of the Johannesburg townships, particularly Soweto, where chakalaka itself was reportedly invented in the 1950s by Mozambican migrant miners and their wives at the gold mines surrounding the city. Chakalaka, a fiery relish of grated carrot, beans, peppers, onion, and curry powder, was originally a way to make pap (maize porridge) more interesting, but it quickly migrated into bread sandwiches as portable lunch food for miners, hawkers, and taxi commuters. The Chakalaka Roll proper, a soft white roll split and filled with chakalaka and a piece of grilled boerewors sausage or chicken, emerged from Soweto's spaza shops and street stalls in the 1970s and 1980s. As the township food culture moved into the post-apartheid mainstream during the 1990s and 2000s, the Chakalaka Roll became a fixture of upscale braais, township tourism circuits, and chic Johannesburg restaurants like Sakhumzi and Mzansi.

In Joburg, the Chakalaka Roll is the people's sandwich. It is taxi-rank food, weekend braai food, soccer-stadium food. The combination of soft white bread, smoky boerewors, and the fierce, sweet-spicy crunch of chakalaka is unmistakably South African, comforting and aggressive at the same time. Every household has its own chakalaka recipe, and arguments about whether to include baked beans (yes, in most townships; controversial elsewhere) are passionate. The roll has crossed into formal dining as well, with chefs like Wandile Mabaso reinterpreting it for tasting menus. But its true home is still the back of a bakkie at a Sunday braai, eaten by hand with a cold Castle Lager.