I S roti canai the best bread in the world? The recent rankings by Taste Atlas, the global food catalogue and review website, places the popular Malaysian street food in the top spot, followed by Colombia’s pan de bono, India’s butter garlic naan, Iran’s nan-e-Barbari and Ecuador’s pan de yuca. While fans of the southeast Asian nation’s diverse, cosmopolitan cuisine have welcomed the ranking, there has predictably been some grumbling from devotees of the breads that didn’t make it to the top spots.
One way to respond to any ranking that seeks to create a hierarchy of cuisines and dishes is to laugh it off. To take seriously what is clearly designed to be attention bait is to walk willingly into an internet slugfest. And yet, there is some value in such lists, which often bring little known dishes to wider global attention: The Taste Atlas ranking, for example, is notable for not featuring any of the obvious selections — the baguettes, focaccias and sourdoughs of Europe — in the top five, giving space instead to breads from places not usually known for them.
The real problem, however, is that lists and rankings focus on the differences between the foods of different nations, rather than the complex histories that link them. For example, the origins of roti canai and Singapore’s roti prata, ranked No 12, both unleavened, layered breads made of refined flour, were shaped by colonialism and the migrations of labour that it engendered. There is certainly a link between the two, as there is between them and the South Indian parotta and, further back in history, perhaps with certain West Asian unleavened breads — and maybe even the scallion pancakes that were originally made by Uighurs in what is today China’s Xinjian province. Can any ranking do justice to this rich history?
