Ever since the masala dosa was voted as the 'national dish' in Outlook's year-end food survey, I have been contemplating a short piece on this much-travelled Mysorean delight. The Outlook survey simply announced its acceptability across borders, but did not tell us why, besides the Southerners, it was the toast of a Kashmiri, Punjabi, Marathi, Gujarati as well as of an Ashomiya palate. It is no small feat in a country where gastronomic variations can be tracked every 25 km, with the change in dialect, for an unassuming yet complicated roll like the dosa to triumph.