The great thing about Tamil Nadu is breakfast: strong coffee with caramelly boiled sugared milk; light idli, rice-flour dumplings, fresh from the steamer; crackling curled sheets of dosai with a sheen of ghee; crisp-tender, savory doughnut-like vadai. It’s also what’s for lunch. Dinner is not traditional in TN; most people just have a light snack in the afternoon, like another vada or two, sold at the tea/coffee stands whose crowds swell as a fresh pot comes to the boil. Tamil Nadu eateries, we found, had a common theme with American diners: Breakfast all day.

Of course, who’s going to argue with this?

OK, I cheated a little. This photo is actually from the end of my trip, at a hotel called Ariya Nivas, in Trivandum, Kerala — not Tamil Nadu. But it’s a textbook example of a South Indian breakfast, with the best poori I had encountered on the trip — the tissue-like top delicately crisp, the bottom satisfyingly chewy like a thin paratha. I was blissfully dipping this into my favorite sauce, the orange coconut sambar (third from top), when my waiter stopped by and told me that no, the chickpea sauce (second from bottom) is meant for the poori! Oops, but … everything went really well with everything else. The other characters here include vada (plural vadai), which looks like a doughnut but is savory and just a little peppery; idli, to its right, a fluffy steamed rice-flour dumpling; uttappam, that pancake studded with red-onion bits; and pongal, which became Daveena’s favorite — a thick, porridgelike concoction of rice and mung beans, with mustard seeds and curry leaves.

The best dosa I had came from a somewhat grimy little place next door to our hotel in Kumbakonam. It exists in my mind as a thing of perfection, beautifully curled and crisped. I was too hungry to take a photo, and the next day’s version was disappointing — it seemed like it had been sitting around, and its curve was crushed.

Hotel Raya’s Annexe-I
Head Post Office Road
Kumbakonam - 612001
Tanjore District, Tamil Nadu

Hotel Ariya Nivas
Aristo Junction, Thampanoor, near railway station
Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala