In 2016, customers queued at UGOOD, a Copenhagen food truck run by Ugandan-born entrepreneur Sylvester Bbaale. A photograph caption in Uganda’s Monitor records the line specifically as clients waiting to buy a Ugandan rolex. UGOOD beat about fifty competitors to win the crowd’s favourite award at a Danish food-truck festival that year.
Here, rolex meant no watch: it was an omelette rolled in chapati. Bbaale, who moved to Denmark as a baby in 1989, used ecological ingredients from Uganda and Denmark and described the truck as a way to introduce a refined version of Ugandan street food. A familiar Kampala snack had crossed borders through migration and enterprise, becoming a dish that explained its origin to the people waiting beside a truck in Copenhagen.