Skip to content
Ali’s Roti sits at 1446 Queen Street West. Mother India Roti sits at 1422. Twenty-four street numbers apart, on the same Parkdale block, and a fair number of Torontonian roti purists will tell you only one of them is selling roti at all.
That is the argument, and it isn’t a manufactured one for the sake of a listicle. It runs along three lines: Trinidadian dhalpuri (feature photo) against Guyanese paratha, downtown against Scarborough, and whether the butter-chicken wrap shops belong in the conversation. Ranking across those camps would just be picking a side, so the ten below sit in the camp they belong to and nowhere else. Three shops that still turn up on other Toronto roti lists didn’t make it: one shut in 2020, one is in Mississauga, and one has an address its own sources can’t agree on.
Start wherever your family is from, then go eat in the other camp.
Trinidadian: dhalpuri, buss-up-shut, doubles
1. Ali’s Roti — Parkdale
Fifty years on Queen West this decade — the shop opened in 1976 — and it’s the roti most downtown Torontonians mean when they say roti.
The dhalpuri is thin, the harder way to do it, and the boneless goat is the order if you’re deciding between the two goat options and don’t want to negotiate bones in a wrap you’re eating standing up. The doubles come with tamarind chutney and a house pepper sauce, and the pepper sauce is not a suggestion of heat.
It’s a small room near Lansdowne and the lunch rush is real. If you have somewhere to be, phone ahead.
Address: 1446 Queen St W • Neighbourhood: Parkdale • Price: $ • Website
2. Mona’s Roti — Scarborough
Twenty-five years on Sheppard, and CP24 went out in May to do a piece about how the owners treat their regulars. That tells you what kind of counter this is.
The hot doubles are the thing — two soft bara around curried channa, assembled in front of you, eaten immediately or not at all. Doubles do not travel and anyone who tells you otherwise has been eating soggy doubles.
Closed Sundays, and it shuts at 7pm the rest of the week, so this is a lunch or early-dinner plan rather than something you get to after work in traffic.
Address: 4810 Sheppard Ave E • Neighbourhood: Scarborough • Price: $ • Google Maps
3. Drupati’s Roti & Doubles — Scarborough
Opens at 9am on Saturdays and Sundays. That’s the entry — doubles are a breakfast food in Trinidad and almost nowhere in Toronto is set up to let you treat them like one.
The dhalpuri is rolled properly and the curried channa has the pepper sitting behind it rather than on top. Morningside is a long way out if you’re coming from downtown, so make it the anchor of a Scarborough morning instead of a special trip.
Address: 2866 Ellesmere Rd • Neighbourhood: Scarborough • Price: $ • Google Maps
4. Island Foods — West End
Buss-up-shut is paratha torn up until it looks like a ripped shirt — that’s what the name means — and it’s served alongside the curry instead of wrapped around it. If you’ve only had roti as a sealed foil cylinder, this is the version that will reset your idea of the food.
Goat or shrimp are the curries to pair with it. One thing to fix in your notes: the King Street West location has closed. Gladstone is the one that’s open, and the Don Mills Road shop is still going too.
Address: 8 Gladstone Ave • Neighbourhood: West end • Price: $ • Google Maps
5. The Roti Hut — Agincourt
Pitfield Road is an industrial pocket of Agincourt and the shop is exactly what that suggests: a counter operation making roti through the day for people who work nearby.
Homestyle curries, doubles, no ceremony. This is the least destination-like place on the list and it’s here because roti in this city is fundamentally counter food, and a list made only of the shops that photograph well would be lying about the cuisine.
Address: 351 Pitfield Rd • Neighbourhood: Agincourt • Price: $ • Google Maps
Guyanese: flaky paratha, duck curry
6. Inner Circle Caribbean Cuisine — Scarborough
The Guyanese side of the argument, and the difference is the bread. Guyanese paratha is layered and flaked apart instead of built on ground split pea, so it shatters where dhalpuri folds.
Duck curry is the other marker. It shows up on Guyanese menus and almost never on Trinidadian ones, and ordering it is the fastest way to understand that “Caribbean roti” is not one cuisine. Kennedy Road, so pair it with anything else you’re doing in that part of Scarborough.
Address: 707 Kennedy Rd • Neighbourhood: Scarborough • Price: $ • Google Maps
7. Wicked Carib — Scarborough
The newer, more composed end of the category. Plated, not wrapped in foil, and priced accordingly.
Whether that’s an improvement is exactly the sort of thing the people in this article’s title argue about. It is a genuinely good kitchen and it is not a roti shop in the sense the other six are, and both halves of that sentence are worth holding onto. Our 17 Scarborough food spots has more of what’s around it.
Address: 2573 Victoria Park Ave • Neighbourhood: Scarborough • Price: $$ • Google Maps
The wrap shops, which some people will tell you don’t count
These three sell butter chicken and lamb in a soft flatbread and call it roti. In the West Indian sense it’s a different food with a shared word, and the people who get annoyed about it have a point. They’re also three of the better cheap lunches downtown, so here they are, labelled.
8. Mother India Roti — Parkdale
Twenty-four doors from Ali’s. That proximity is the single best way to understand the whole argument: walk out of one, walk into the other, eat both in an afternoon, form your own view.
The wraps are heavy — butter chicken, channa, aloo — and they’re built for filling you up rather than for finesse. There’s a second location on St Clair.
Address: 1422 Queen St W • Neighbourhood: Parkdale • Price: $ • Google Maps
9. Roti Cuisine of India — The Annex
The long-running Dupont version, and the one most likely to be somebody’s student-years default. Butter chicken in a wrap, done consistently, for years.
Small, and the seating is nominal. It’s a takeout counter that has a few chairs, not a restaurant that also does takeout.
Address: 308 Dupont St • Neighbourhood: The Annex • Price: $ • Google Maps
10. Roti Mahal — Queen West
Packed rolls, butter chicken or lamb, on the stretch of Queen where the alternative is a $22 sandwich. That context is most of the appeal. See also the cheap eats list for the rest of that strip.
Address: 554 Queen St W • Neighbourhood: Queen West • Price: $ • Google Maps
Nobody wins this argument, which is the correct outcome for an argument about lunch. What you can do is settle your own version of it in one afternoon on a single Parkdale block, or spend a Saturday morning in Scarborough finding out that Guyanese and Trinidadian roti are not the same food. If you want the culture around the food as well, our Caribbean Carnival guide covers the weekend the whole city shows up for.
lead photo Trinidadian Roti by anaxmedia – https://www.flickr.com/photos/aneil4lom/52910078991/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=154149082
