Classroom lesson 路 Food馃嚭馃嚞 Uganda

The Rolex - Uganda's favourite street food

Not a watch - a rolled-up egg and vegetable chapati

Photo 路 Wikimedia Commons

What is it?

The Rolex is Uganda's most popular street food. Despite the name, it has nothing to do with watches. It is a rolled-up chapati (a soft flat bread) with a hot fluffy omelette and chopped vegetables inside. It is cheap, quick, filling and absolutely delicious. The name is a joke that comes from the words 'rolled eggs'.

Tell me more

Across Uganda, you'll see little roadside stalls with a small charcoal cooker, a frying pan and a wooden chopping board. The Rolex cook makes the chapati first - flour, water, a little oil, kneaded and rolled flat. Then they fry an omelette in a flat pan, throwing in chopped tomato, onion, cabbage and sometimes chillies. When the omelette is just set, they slide the chapati on top of it, let them stick together for a few seconds, then roll the whole thing up like a giant cigar.

A Rolex is wrapped in a piece of paper and handed to you piping hot. You eat it standing up, walking along the street, or sitting on a bench. University students love them because they are filling and cheap. Drivers love them because you can eat one with one hand. Children love them because of the soft warm chapati.

There is a yearly Rolex Festival in Kampala where dozens of cooks compete to make the best Rolex. There are speed-roll competitions (who can make a perfect Rolex fastest), giant Rolex competitions (who can make the biggest), and creativity competitions (who can invent the best filling - cheese, sausage, banana, beans, whatever).

The Rolex is fairly young - cooks started making them in the 2000s. But it spread quickly. Today it is one of the foods that Ugandans living abroad miss the most. Many ask their relatives to send chapati flour from home so they can recreate the taste of a roadside Rolex thousands of kilometres away.

In the classroom

Walk your class through this in 15 minutes.

Talk together

Discussion prompts

  1. 01The Rolex got its name from a joke. Are there any foods in your country with funny names?
  2. 02Lots of cultures have a 'wrap' food - burritos, kati rolls, kebabs, sandwich wraps. Why might wrapping food be such a popular idea?
  3. 03What would you put inside YOUR perfect Rolex?
Try this

Classroom activity

Plan your own class 'Rolex'. List the wrap (could be tortilla, pita, chapati), the egg or main filling, and 3 vegetables. Vote on the class's favourite combination. If your teacher agrees, make them for a Friday lunch and have a tasting.