My First Encounter with Puttu: A Breakfast Dish

Travel writing likes the remarkable meal. Ordinary breakfasts are harder, and often truer. They happen before the day has decided to be an anecdote.

A small ceremony

Puttu arrives looking almost architectural: pale, layered, steaming. Beside it, something sweet or something hot, depending on the house. The first bite is less a revelation than a correction. This is how a morning can be made.

I have since learned that familiarity is built from repetition more than from rapture. The second breakfast teaches more than the first. By the third, the dish is no longer a discovery. It is a way of starting.

A place begins to belong to you, a little, when its breakfast no longer needs explaining.