Wrap

A medium wrap in the Dutch catering trade starts as a pale wheat disc about twenty centimetres across, with faint brown baking marks on the surface. The cook lays it flat, spreads the filling across the lower third, folds the bottom up over it, tucks both sides and rolls forward into a tight cylinder, then often slices it on the diagonal so the layers show at the cut. Straight from the fridge the tortilla is cool and pliable, and it tears with a slow stretch. Warmed on a flat top it blisters in places, smells of toasted flour, and gives a faint crackle when the knife goes through. A spoonful of sauce or soft cheese along the seam holds the roll shut.

The fillings come from the snack bar and the gyros grill. Snackbar Friecoenda in Brunssum lists a Gyros Wrap with lettuce, tzatziki and chili sauce, a Kip Shoarma Wrap with garlic sauce, and a Mexicana Wrap built on a fried Mexicano meat snack with lettuce, onion and chili sauce. The gyros version shows what the format does well: hot, salty, fatty meat meets cold cucumber and yoghurt in the same bite, and the soft tortilla keeps the two from knocking against each other. Grilled chicken with lettuce, tomato and cucumber is the stock cold version, and the cucumber is what you hear first, a wet crunch under the soft bread.

Wraps fail at the fold. A tortilla straight from a cold shelf splits there, and the crack runs the full length of the roll if the filling is packed hard at one end. A thin sauce seeps into the wheat and turns the bottom third gummy within the hour, and a wet salad softens it until it tears under a thumb. The warm version loosens the dough on the flat top, so the first bite pulls apart in a soft stretch, and the steam carries chicken and onion smell up before the wrap reaches the mouth. Cheese in a warm wrap melts into the seam and glues it, which is why a pressed wrap travels better in paper than a cold one.

The roll is eaten from the paper sleeve it was sold in, one hand free, usually on the move between a desk and a platform. The tortilla encloses the filling from the first bite, so the last bite carries as much chicken or salmon as the first, and nothing falls out except the occasional drop of sauce at the open end. A crusty broodje scatters crumbs down a coat, while the wrap leaves a faint smear of oil and flour on the fingers. Sliced on the diagonal and stood upright in a paper cup, it also fills a lunch tray neatly, which suits the delivery rounds that stock it.

The format travels well to events. Dutch Food Concepts runs TortillaWraps, a catering stall that serves wraps next to tosti and stroopwafels, and it sent a food truck through 31 locations in three weeks to hand out wraps, tosti or a stroopwafel to the customers of the electronics maker Murr Elektronik. The same company fitted out a Wrap & Go store as a salad bar with greenhouse styling. On a festival lawn the disc suits the job, since a cook can fold one in a few seconds, hand it over warm, and move to the next person in the queue.

Origin and history

Dutch supermarkets print tortilla and wrap on the same pack, and the filled roll sold at lunch counters is called a wrap. No record dates the first one on a Dutch counter, so the earliest firm evidence comes from the lunch trade and the snack bar, where the roll sits on the same list as the tosti and the broodje.

On 8 November 2016 the Lunch-Bus, a lunch service based on Bennebroekerweg in Rijsenhout, announced wraps in three fillings: gyros with tzatziki, a vegetarian roll and smoked salmon with cream cheese. They were sold in packs of two. Two of the three fillings come straight from the Dutch broodje repertoire, where smoked salmon with cream cheese is an old pairing and gyros fills the pita and the roll alike.

The Lunch-Bus runs five buses to workplaces in Haarlemmermeer on every workday. Its announcement of 8 November 2016 put the wraps on the list those buses carry, so a pair of tortilla rolls with salmon or gyros could arrive at an office door beside the usual rolls.