Please Don’t Ever Call Roti Canai an ‘Asian Flat Croissant’

A recipe for the roti canai (also known as the roti prata), caused quite a stir recently for its, er, creative renaming of the beloved Southeast Asian staple.

On February 23, Facebook page Nyonya Cooking posted a recipe for the roti canai. Only it wasn’t called roti canai, but “Asian flat croissant.”

What in the world is that?

As if on cue, an army of people insulted by the bastardisation of their favourite street food started going after the Facebook page.

“You don't call 'a pizza,' a 'European naan' right?” said one netizen, who was obviously not pleased with the renaming.

People also turned the misnomer on its head with their own descriptions of the croissant, calling the pastry a “French roti prata” or an “Ang Moh rolled prata kosong.” “Ang Moh” is Singaporean and Malaysian slang for Caucasians, while “prata kosong” refers to a plain roti prata.

Domino’s Pizza Malaysia also joined the game with a new advertisement describing the pizza as the “Italian Flat Naan.”

It bears repeating: People, please stop whitewashing Asian food.

It’s lazy, unoriginal, and ignores a dish’s cultural significance. To illustrate our point, here are a few examples of just how ridiculous it sounds.

If the roti canai is a “flat croissant,” then the murtabak would naturally be a “stuffed croissant.” They’re made of the same dough, but within the folded layers of the murtabak sits a sinful mixture of egg, onion, and minced meat. The murtabak is common across Southeast Asia and Arabia, where there are local variations of the dish.

Vitenam's gỏi cuốn, China's chun juan, Singapore's popiah, and the Philippines' lumpia are all distinct but equally mouth-watering variations of the same thing — a refreshing combination of vegetables (and sometimes meat) wrapped into a compact roll with a thin sheet of flour or rice paper.

OK, this famous Vietnamese sandwich is literally a baguette sub, a legacy from the French colonial era. But while the French usually have their baguettes with pâté, the Vietnamese put their own spin on the bread and ended up with the now wildly popular bánh mì.

Perhaps to not scare-off foreigners or Filipinos who grew up in the West, the savory dinuguan is now called “chocolate meat” by some. Those who try the stew without knowing what it’s actually made of will be shocked to know that its main ingredients are pig’s blood and offal. It’s also seasoned with vinegar.

See how calling them by their actual names is so much better?

There have been bigger gastronomical boo-boos when it comes to misunderstood Asian food. Like the time when a Malaysian contestant was ousted from MasterChef UK because her chicken rendang wasn’t “crispy.” The judges were evidently unaware that rendang is a popular Southeast Asian dish that’s traditionally stewed to tenderness.

Or the time when a food blogger cut up some bananas, called them sushi, and ate them with chopsticks.

Compared to tragic fails like those, calling a roti canai a “croissant” isn’t exactly blasphemous. Both are delicious flakey pastries oozing with buttery goodness.

Nyonya Cooking responded to the public outcry in the comments section of its controversial Facebook post, saying that it was supposed to be a “fun title” that would make the recipe more “relatable” for readers who are not familiar with the Asian names.

We see their point. They’re trying to introduce a new dish, the roti canai, to people by associating it with a similar food item that they already know, the croissant. Well, instead of blasting the name as an obnoxious title, they could have included in the description that it is something like an Asian flat croissant, and not an in-your-face declaration that it actually is a croissant.

While the naming faux pas was born out of good intentions, the public outcry against it demonstrates the problematic nature of whitewashing Asian dishes.

Here comes the big question: How “Western” must a food be to qualify as “relatable?”

If calling a roti canai a croissant makes it more relatable to unfamiliar audiences, how will the roti canai ever step out of the shadow of its similar-looking but gastronomically distinct cousin?

To give it the recognition that it deserves, perhaps we should start calling a roti canai, a roti canai.

Find Koh Ewe on Instagram.