Recipe
🥙 LUNCH
Gatsby
A foot-long roll crammed with meat or masala fillings, hot chips, and peri-peri, Cape Town's legendary sharing sandwich.
South African · easy · serves 4
prep 20 min · cook 25 min
~419 cal · 33g protein · 30g carbs · 17g fat · 4g fiber · 2g sugars · 7g sat fat (estimated, per serving)
↓ Jump to Recipe
AI-generated illustration
The Gatsby is a Cape Town institution, an enormous foot-long submarine sandwich born in the working-class Cape Flats in the 1970s and named on a whim after the film. Cheap, huge, and made for sharing, it is cut into portions and passed around.
A long bread roll is split and packed with a filling, most classically slap chips (soft fried potato chips), plus masala steak, polony, fried fish, or a Cape Malay curry, all doused in tangy achar and fiery peri-peri sauce. It is unashamedly excessive, the kind of sandwich that feeds a group of friends or a hungry worker for very little, and a proud symbol of Cape Town's melting-pot food culture.
Saved recipes and passport stamps are kept on this device. Sign in to keep them across your devices and leave reviews.
Make it yours
✓ Naturally dairy-, egg-, nut- and pork-free. No swaps needed.
Toggle a diet and the ingredients rewrite themselves with regional substitutes.
🥕 Vegetarian
🌱 Vegan
🌾 Gluten-Free
🥛 Dairy-Free
🥜 Nut-Free
🥚 Egg-Free
🐖 Pork-Free
Dietary labels are a cooking guide, not allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish; we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, read the label on every product you use, and note that a kitchen can cross-contaminate in ways a recipe cannot control.
Ingredients
US
Metric
Serves 4
2 large long soft bread rolls
1 lb masala steak (or curried filling)
1 1/2 lb potatoes, cut into thick chips
2 tbsp vinegar, for the chips
1/3 cup peri-peri sauce
1/4 cup achar (pickle)
2 cups lettuce and tomato
for frying oil, for frying
Instructions
1
Fry the thick-cut chips until cooked through and pale gold, then pile them into a paper bag or bowl, shake over plenty of salt and douse them with vinegar so they go soft.
2
Cook the masala steak (or curried filling) until saucy and tender.
3
Split the long rolls lengthwise but leave them hinged at the back, then layer in the meat and pile the hot chips on top.
✎ Chef’s note
These are slap chips, and slap is Afrikaans for limp. Thick-cut, salted and drenched in vinegar until they go soft, they are meant to be floppy, not crisp. The carb-on-carb pile is the point of a Gatsby, not a mistake.
4
Add peri-peri, achar and salad, close the roll and cut it crosswise into four to share.
✎ Chef’s note
A Gatsby is a foot long and is never eaten alone. Rashaad Pandy put the first one together at Super Fisheries in Athlone in 1976, for four men who had helped him clear a plot: a round Portuguese loaf, leftover chips, polony and the atchar his father used to make. One of them, Froggy, called it a Gatsby smash, after the film then showing at the Athlone cinema, and the name stuck. Polony remains the cheapest and still the most popular filling; masala steak, chicken, calamari and Russians came later, as did the long French roll.
Cape Town Cape Flats tradition.
Ratings & reviews
Cooked it? Rate this dish:
No account needed. Sign in to leave a full review with a comment.
Cooked it?
Kept on this device, no account needed. Sign in to leave a review and keep your passport across your devices.
No reviews yet, be the first to cook it.
🌏 While it simmers, know your destination
📍
Western Cape. The Western Cape holds Cape Town and the Cape Malay kitchens brought by enslaved people from Southeast Asia, long credited with giving South Africa bobotie, curried mince under savoury custard, though who invented it is genuinely disputed: some historians trace the dish to the Dutch settlers instead, and its distant ancestor may be a Roman baked custard of meat and milk. Sweet-spiced curries, koesisters, and braai grilling define the region.
🗺️
South Africa. Cape Malay cooking came from people enslaved and exiled to the Cape from the Indonesian archipelago, India and Sri Lanka under Dutch rule, and it brought cinnamon, cumin and dried fruit into a European framework. Bobotie is where the argument sits: Cape Malay and Dutch parentage are both defensible and neither has been settled.
🌍
Africa. Much of what reads as timeless African cooking is younger than the Atlantic crossings. Maize, cassava, groundnut, chilli and tomato all arrived from the Americas after 1500 and pushed older crops aside; millet, sorghum, teff, yam and fonio are the ones that were already here, and the map still shows the join.
The story behind this dish is up top, worth a read while the pot works.
More from South Africa
Chakalaka & PapA punchy curried vegetable-and-bean relish beside smooth white maize porridge, braai-day essentials.
Bunny ChowA hollowed half-loaf of bread filled with fiery Durban curry, the ultimate hand-held street meal.
BobotieCurried spiced mince baked under a golden savory custard, sweet with dried fruit and fragrant with bay, South Africa’s national comfort.
Browse all South Africa recipes →
Good to know
Storing it: Best made to order. Prep the fillings ahead and assemble just before eating so nothing turns soggy.
Make it a South Africa meal
Rooibos Iced TeaDrink
Malva PuddingDessert
BobotieDinner
Similar dishes from around the world
Montreal Smoked Meat SandwichCanada
Philly CheesesteakUnited States
ChoripánArgentina
Bermuda Fish SandwichBermuda
Cuban SandwichCuba
Croque MonsieurFrance
Cuisine
Diet
Frequently asked questions
What is Gatsby?
A foot-long roll crammed with meat or masala fillings, hot chips, and peri-peri, Cape Town's legendary sharing sandwich.
Where does Gatsby come from?
Gatsby is a South African dish from Western Cape, South Africa.
Can Gatsby be made vegan, gluten-free, or dairy-free?
This Gatsby recipe includes substitution suggestions for vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, egg-free, and pork-free versions, including several at once such as gluten-free and dairy-free together. Treat them as a starting guide rather than a guarantee, and see the allergen note below.
Is Gatsby safe for people with food allergies?
Our dietary labels and substitutions are a cooking guide, not medical or allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish, but we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, always read the label on every product you use, and remember a home or commercial kitchen can cross-contaminate ingredients in ways a recipe cannot control.
How long does Gatsby take to make?
About 45 minutes total (20 minutes prep, 25 minutes cooking), serving 4.
Get the Sunday Spin
One dish from somewhere in the world, in your inbox every Sunday. No spam, just dinner inspiration you can cook that day.