Puffed rice tossed in a hot oggarane of mustard, curry leaves, onion and green chilli, lifted with lime and a scatter of groundnuts. Davanagere's favourite street-side snack, and the city's way of saying hello.

Plump green chillies slit, dipped in a spiced gram-flour batter and fried to a crisp gold. Gently hot, and best eaten with a fistful of mandakki beside it, the way every bajji stall in town serves it.

Strong, milky and properly sweet. Filter coffee and cardamom tea poured hot, to go with the chatter.

Crisp hollow puris filled with spiced potato and chickpea, dunked in chilled mint-and-tamarind water. One bite, no pausing.

Flat puris stacked with potato, onion, tomato and three chutneys, then buried under a snowfall of fine sev. Sweet, tangy and crunchy all at once.

Bite-sized triangles of flaky pastry around a spiced potato-and-pea filling, fried to a deep gold and served with chutney.

Karnataka's vermicelli uppittu: fine shavige tossed with a mustard-seed tempering, curry leaves, vegetables and a squeeze of lime. Light, savoury and comforting.

Freshly pressed and chilled, just sweet, with a hint of mint and black salt to cool the evening down.

Crisp cucumber, carrot, onion, tomato and beetroot with lime and a whisper of chaat masala. Cool, fresh and ready for what follows.

Tender babycorn in a crisp batter, tossed in a glossy garlic, ginger and soy sauce with spring onion. Indo-Chinese at its most crowd-pleasing.

Patties of spinach, green peas and potato, spiced and pan-seared until the edges crisp. Vibrant green outside, soft within.

Okra sliced thin and fried until crisp and curled, dusted with chilli, turmeric and amchur. Impossible to stop at one.

Soaked moong dal with cucumber, grated coconut, coriander and lime, finished with a mustard-seed and green-chilli tempering. The cooling salad that opens every Kannadiga feast.

Thin, sun-dried lentil crisps fried till they blister. For the crunch between courses.

Soft whole-wheat flatbreads kneaded with fresh fenugreek leaves and ajwain, cooked on a hot tawa. Gently bitter, deeply fragrant.

Layered, flaky parathas folded with a spiced filling and crisped in ghee. Built for scooping up curry.

Cubes of soft paneer simmered in a rich onion-tomato gravy with cashew and warm spices. The dish every table reaches for first.

Toor dal cooked till creamy, then finished with a sizzling tadka of ghee, cumin, garlic and red chilli.

Long-grained rice tossed on high heat with crunchy vegetables, soy and pepper. Smoky, savoury and the natural partner to the manchurian.

Steaming rice with a tangy, home-style sambar of toor dal, vegetables, tamarind and freshly roasted sambar powder. The course that tastes like home.

Thick set curd to cool the palate, crunchy fryums and a sharp spoon of pickle to close the savoury half of the meal the South Indian way.

Pillowy discs of fresh chenna soaked in chilled, saffron-and-cardamom thickened milk and scattered with pistachio.

Milk cooked down for hours into dense, caramel-sweet khova, set soft and perfumed with cardamom. The rich, milky sweet every Karnataka sweet shop is judged by.

A cold scoop to close the plate, in a flavour or two to choose from.

Betel leaf folded around gulkand, fennel, coconut and sweet supari. The traditional mouth-freshener that ends a celebration dinner.