By Ramin Ganeshram 27 May 2021
When I visited my father s Caribbean home of Trinidad & Tobago from our New York base, I d trail behind him as he walked the streets and byways of his youth. Most exciting were the stops he made at street food vendors, who hawked everything from peppered fruits to peanuts and spiced chickpeas, hand pies stuffed with seasoned potato, and shaved iced cones liberally doused with fruit syrups and sweetened condensed milk.
But of these offerings only one was the indisputable king: doubles. It s the street food of the twin island nation that emerges as a jewel
Doubles is a humble sandwich made from curried chickpeas tucked between two pieces of fried flat bread and dressed in tamarind and coriander sauces, mango chutney,
What it takes to make doubles a national dish
Thursday 24 December 2020
In this May 30, 2020 file photo a customer collects her doubles from the popular Yellow Van Doubles in Aranguez on International Doubles Day. FILE PHOTO/SUREASH CHOLAI -
QUINCY ROSS
It’s been just about three weeks since the morning I woke up and found my Facebook feed smothered in some saucy trolling directed at Minister of Agriculture, Land, and Fisheries Clarence Rambharat. Yet, every walk past a doubles box still triggers some sort of post traumatic doubles disorder.
At a Point Fortin Borough Corporation event the minister did one of the top five most dangerous things to do in close range of the Trini public: he said some not so favourable things about doubles. In any context, that was a belly move. From harshly worded status updates to a local celebrity in semi-formal threads dining at his favourite doubles vendor in celebration and adoration, the public made their position on doubles as a national d