Night Market · Stuffed Griddle Snack

Zanzibar Pizza

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Despite the name, it has nothing to do with Italy — it's a folded, egg-sealed street snack invented at Stone Town's Forodhani Gardens night market.

A thin sheet of dough is stretched on a hot flat griddle, piled with minced meat or fish, egg, onion, chili and cheese, then folded into a parcel and fried in ghee until crisp outside and molten inside. Vendors slice it into wedges right on the griddle and hand it over wrapped in paper, still sizzling.

Why it's made this way: It emerged in the 1980s at Forodhani Gardens when vendors began folding Indian-style chapati dough around fillings for tourists — the name 'pizza' was a marketing nod to a food outsiders would recognize, not a nod to Italy at all.