Roti, 4 May 2018

My coworkers are a troubled lot. My boss’s favorite restaurant is Olive Garden. Another coworker professes an unashamed love for Red Lobster. And two years ago, a mere six months into my position as “sexy mail bastard Jesus”, one of them very confidently looked me square in the eyes and asserted that gyros and shawarma were the same thing.
When I took this information back to Keith aka Keith Ashley Keith aka Kafe Nasty, he scrunched his face up in disgust and said, “No. One’s Levantine and the other’s Mediterranean.” It was a simple, direct, and, most importantly, committed statement.
Well, now that winter is finally fucking over here in the Twin Cities, I can get back out and find things to eat that I haven’t had before and I really didn’t know what the hell I wanted so I figured to bet some safe money and just Google “mediterranean 55401″ and the first result I got was Roti. So I click on their site and they say they’re Mediterranean and I look at the options and it dawns on me that, oh, this is more of that fast casual shit. First it was Subway, then it was Chipotle, then came Naf Naf but before them was Bep, and now there’s Roti.
OK. Whatever. I’ll give it a try.
But something started to irk me and I couldn’t put my finger on it until after I ate my sandwich.
Yeah, sandwich.
I got a sandwich because Roti is not a place I would say is very committal.
Yes, it had lamb. Yes, it had cucumber and tomato. Yes, it had tzatziki. Yes, it was in a pita. But this was not a gyro. It was a pan-Mediterranean amalgamation of blah blah blah blah blah. You see, Subway pretends to be a deli, Chipotle does burritos, Bep does banh mi, Naf Naf gives you food poisoning does shawarma. What does Roti do?
Mediterranean.
OK.
I don’t know why this bothered me but perhaps it was because they were trying to take fusion too far by not being disparate enough. Or maybe too disparate and too localized. I don’t know. I can cite that Elizabeth David, in A Book of Mediterranean Food, posited that the major binding elements of that region’s cuisine are the grape, the olive, and wheat. And then beyond that? I got nothing. But then I realized what had bothered me: It never committed to being anything specific. Just Mediterranean. And it treated Mediterranean food the way every Bamboo Garden / Giant Panda / Star Dragon joint treats Asian food. This is lower case m “mediterranean” the way those places are lower case c “chinese”, just offered in a more contemporary package. It’s hip. It looks like a co-op salad bar that you could see the Black Keys play in.
I realized this after putting together my gyro. I had accidentally added hummus, red cabbage slaw, and sumac onions. My euzh from Naf Naf. I had just hybridized a gyro and a shawarma.
Now, I know some of you just fucking came in your own faces at the thought of that, I don’t blame or shame here. A younger me would have had the same reaction. And I mean a wwwaaayyy younger me. Like the me so young that I had only first tried sushi yesterday.

Let’s break this fucker down:

1. First of all, these were lamb meat balls, not lamb on the vert spit. They had quinoa in them. Fancy but altogether not even noticeable.
   
2. These were tucked into a pita shaped like a hoagie roll. OK, nothing says pita has to be a disc, right?
   
3. They proceeded to confound me by asking me about condiments before the goddamned vegetables. Subway doesn’t do that. Chipotle doesn’t do that. Naf Naf doesn’t do that. Who does that? Roti. Which is exactly why my dick turned into a scared turtle and I panicked and went Levantine and Mediterranean. I said, “Tzatziki,” and big homie behind the counter asked if I wanted hummus and I panicked and said, “Yeah.”
4. Homegirl working the veggies could not have been in more a hurry. I pick tomato and cucumber. “Anything else?” I pick the red cabbage slaw. “Anything else?” I pick the sumac onions. “Anything else?” Nope.

And that was my shawaro, my gyrma, if you will. I got some couscous the size of fucking caviar on the side.
And how did it taste? Like fucking Naf Naf.
I can’t report on the tzatziki, aka Greek tartar sauce, because I couldn’t fucking taste it.
I couldn’t distinguish the cold veggies from one another.
All I can tell you about the lamb was that it was cooked to well done so I’m confident I won’t shit my brains out in the next twenty minutes but I don’t know how it tasted. And this is my fault, true, but melding Levantine and Mediterranean shouldn’t be that hard when you consider that the Levant is part of the Mediterranean. I should have been able to distinguish different flavors.
All I could taste was something akin to the aftermath of some asshole setting off a pack of Black Cats in my spice cupboard.
It is over-seasoned two ways: Too many spices and too much of each spice. It doesn’t focus on what makes each component of a dish work singularly or in unison with one or another component. It’s a flavor explosion for the kind of insulated inland cretins who think that any opposite of bland is good.
This is pan-Mediterranean fusion cuisine marketed to the whitest fucking ignoramus alive: The Urban White Collar American Midwesterner. The Wine Mom and the Weekend Dad.
The Pastry Blogger knows more about food than these Apple Valley commuters.
This is food for people who wouldn’t know cumin if you shoved their noses in it. People who buy their marinara from co-ops. People who make no distinction between aioli and mayonnaise.
People who are lazy in their approach to food and don’t appreciate nuance will love this place because omg it haz evrything! It’s so flaverfull!
You’re goddamned right it has flavor. It has so much flavor that I can’t accurately assess the dill sitch in the tzatziki or tell the difference between the cucumbers or onions. It’s a literal flavor bomb. It’s too much. I had to go next door and get a slice of cheese pizza just to reset my palate.
I realize just how cunty it is to end this in rhyme and say “It’s over-priced and over-spiced” so I won’t do that. I will say that this is yet another in a long history of lazy and outright vulgar Americanizations of foreign cuisines that try to exoticize and ornamentize them by throwing every “odd” flavor one can think of at them. It makes them “special” if you just hit the fuck out of it with garlic and cilantro and basil and cumin and star anise and fennel and balsamic vinegar and pink Himalayan salt and crushed almonds and breast milk and silkworm gland and crushed oyster crackers and extra virgin sacrifice oil because that’s what food from other countries goddamn tastes like! GAH! I JIZZED ON MY OWN FACE! OMG, BECCA, SO MUCH FLAVER! MUCH WOW!
The couscous was alright.