BANNU, Pakistan: Before sunrise, the narrow lane outside Speen Sar, a modest restaurant, fills with customers waiting for halwa, a dense sweet made from wheat starch, sugar and clarified butter, that serves as breakfast for many people in this northwestern city.

Inside the restaurant’s kitchen, the morning air is thick with the scent of caramelized sugar and heated ghee. A chef leans over a large metal vat, dissolving sugar into the hot fat before adding a slurry of flour and water. With rhythmic, heavy strokes, he stirs the mixture until it thickens into a glossy halwa.

He pours the sweet onto a tray and rushes toward the counter, where a crowd of patrons has already gathered. Three cooks work in quick succession to keep pace with demand, turning out batch after batch during the breakfast rush in Bannu, a city in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

While halwa is widely eaten as a dessert or festival sweet across South and Central Asia and the Middle East, Bannu stands apart for turning it into a morning staple. Across most of Pakistan, breakfast tends to be savory, typically consisting of omelets, parathas or puris, and in some places nihari, a slow-cooked meat stew. Here, however, halwa is not a side dish but the meal itself, eaten plain or with bread before the workday begins.

“We open the shop at the time of morning prayer, and after prayer, we start preparing,” says Zahid Khan, whose grandfather Akbar Ghulam opened the restaurant over six decades ago.

The shop’s name, Speen Sar — Pashto for “white-haired man” — dates back to its earliest days. Khan said the business began as a small stall run by his grandfather. As he grew older and his hair turned white, customers began directing others to the “speen sar” shop, the place where the white-haired man sold halwa. The nickname endured, eventually becoming the shop’s official identity.

Speen Sar relies on a labor-intensive process of extracting starch from wheat flour.

“In our halwa, we use ghee, sugar, flour and other ingredients. From the flour, the starch that comes out is what we use to make the halwa,” Khan explained before examining the cooking process in his kitchen.

Bannu sits at the crossroads between Pakistan’s former tribal areas and the settled plains of the northwest, and the halwa shop serves as a rare social equalizer, drawing laborers, traders, students and travelers to the same counter each morning. For many passing through the city, stopping for halwa is not optional.

“Whenever I come from Waziristan ... the first thing I do is start with halwa,” says Irafullah Mehsud, an expatriate worker. “I eat the halwa first, and only then move on to other things.”

The popularity of the dish is partly due to its shelf life and to what the owners call good quality. At Rs500 ($1.80) per kilogram, it is an affordable luxury as well.

“Our halwa is widely consumed with breakfast, and it does not spoil quickly. If you want, that you will eat it tomorrow, you can even set some aside for the next day,” Khan said, pointing to a tray of nishasta halwa, a variety made by extracting wheat starch before cooking.

While the region offers variations including sohan halwa, milk-based recipes, and carrot-infused batches, this halwa offered by Speen Sar remains the undisputed king of the breakfast table in this city.

“This is a tradition of the people of Bannu. Early in the morning, everyone eats it and comes here,” says Razaullah Khan, a student at a local college. “Eating halwa is a common practice here ... but this one is the most popular. People eat it for breakfast.”

For the elders of the city, the habit is as much about routine as it is about flavor.

“This tradition has been going on for the past forty to fifty years ever since I can remember,” says Sakhi Marjan, a local elder in his late sixties. “We first come to the Azad Mandi market and then come here to eat halwa. We really enjoy this halwa. It is delicious.”

As the sun rises over Bannu, this ‘sweet’ trade shows no sign of slowing. For those like Gul Sher, a regular from Jani Khel, a town in a neighboring tribal district, a day without the local sweet is a day started wrong.

“As soon as I step into Bannu, I start my day with halwa. After that, the rest of the day goes well,” Sher said before finishing his plate of halwa.

“It is a sweet dish, and it makes the day better. It is a good thing.”