First Bite: A journey through urban India's diverse breakfast cultures

Priyadarshini Chatterjee's First Bite explores India's urban breakfasts, blending food, history, and culture into a rich ethnography of everyday life

First Bite: Breakfast Stories from Urban India

by Priyadarshini Chatterjee

Published by Speaking Tiger

356 pages ₹699 

Priyadarshini Chatterjee’s First Bite: Breakfast Stories from Urban India takes its readers on a journey across ten urban centres of the country, and introduces them to the food with which these cities begin their day. She then uses this meal to analyse the social, cultural and economic rhythms of the places in question.

 

First Bite begins its journey from Amritsar and ends with Hyderabad. Along the way, it covers Varanasi, Delhi, Kolkata, Shillong, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Kochi in its culinary excursion. It introduces readers to these cities’ breakfast spots and popular breakfast patterns, and we witness the eateries in action as they serve their customers before they begin their day. 

As Chatterjee tastes everything, from the Amritsari kulcha and Ahmedabad’s fafda-jalebi to Shillong’s jadoh and Kochi’s savala vada, readers get an account of the history, socio-cultural roots and mouth-watering descriptions of these cities’ breakfast menus.

 

For instance, Chatterjee points out that the best flavours of Amritsari food are forged in the tandoor, and traces the link that today’s tandoor shares with the old tradition of sanjha chulha, or the common oven. She also notes that while Ahmedabad is dotted with vegetarian breakfast places, non-vegetarian options are available, although the choice of eating non-vegetarian food in the city is linked to not just dietary choice but morality as well. Then there are places like the darshinis of Bengaluru and the Irani hotels of Hyderabad that became part of the breakfast culture of these cities. 

Through sources as wide-ranging as old government gazettes and multiple historical and cultural accounts, Chatterjee delves into the history of breakfast in these spaces. Her research reveals how people ate in the past, and how caste and class, along with colonial influences, have come to affect, even create, the popular breakfast choices of today. For example, it might surprise many readers to learn that vada pav, the quintessential Mumbai breakfast, has Portuguese links as both the pav and the potato were brought to India on Portuguese ships. Her research also illuminates how migration has shaped breakfast habits in almost all major urban centres of the country. In recent times, its impact can be seen in the availability of puri-bhaji in Shillong or the large number of idli shops in the area known as the mini-Tamil Nadu of Ahmedabad. But the long-term impact of migration during Partition is visible in its influence on some of the popular breakfast items associated today with places like Amritsar and Delhi. 

Chatterjee doesn’t limit her research to written sources only. She speaks to a number of people as she visits both the iconic and the not-so-iconic breakfast places, revealing how the clientele as well as the food preparation can differ. Other patterns appear as well. As she focuses on the breakfasts consumed on the street rather than at home, it’s clear that except in Shillong, these spaces are predominantly populated by men. It’s men who own and work in these eateries, and it is men who patronise them. Sometimes these patrons might visit the places for a leisurely breakfast, but more often, it’s for a quick bite before they can set off to a hectic day’s work. First Bite also makes visible how history and geography, along with layers of caste and class-based hierarchies, have influenced the kind of food eaten in different areas. 

Chatterjee uses evocative descriptions of the places and food with personal touches in all these essays. The result is a book that is accessible despite its detailed research. Chatterjee doesn’t spoon-feed her conclusions to the readers. She doesn’t collate or analyse her findings in a separate chapter, trusting the reader to draw their conclusions.

 

The chapters work as standalone essays, and the best way to read First Bite is to savour the writing slowly, one city at a time. This gives enough space for each city and its breakfast culture to stand out on the page. That said, the inclusion of current breakfast practices at home would have added to the book’s scope and brought out the contrast between the inside/outside spaces more starkly. 

First Bite can be read as an insider’s guide to the must-visit breakfast places of the cities it covers. However, reading it as just that would be a disservice. In her introduction, which sets the scene and gives a history of the morning meal across the world, she writes that First Bite attempts “an ethnography of the morning meal in urban India”. By linking popular breakfast choices outside the home to the histories and realities of urban India, Chatterjee succeeds in this daunting task.

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The reviewer is an independent writer and translator