Sandwich · Cape Flats Icon
The Gatsby
Photo: Warren Rohner / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0
The Gatsby was invented in one of the most turbulent years of apartheid-era unrest, 1976, yet it went on to become one of the most unifying, best-loved foods across Cape Town's communities.
A footlong bread roll stuffed with slap chips (vinegar-soaked fries), a protein such as polony, steak, calamari or masala fish, and lashings of atchar, then sliced into shareable wedges. It's sold whole or by the half from fish-and-chips shops across the city.
Why it's made this way: Invented in 1976 by Rashaad Pandy at Super Fisheries in Athlone to feed workers renovating his shop, the sandwich took its name from a worker's joking reference to The Great Gatsby, then screening at a local cinema.
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Part of World of Street Food — 3248 dishes from 118 countries.
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