The Egg Factory

This place is tucked away in a small lane opposite the main branch of State Bank of India on St. Mark's Road, in a building called White house. The settings are wonderful: it's got a robust look, not flashy, almost rustic, but very comfortable, with a great view of the beauty of old Bangalore on St. Mark's Road. Here is a snap of the view from where we were sitting. The owner, Mr Yogesh, came and joined us for lunch and had a chat with us. As the name suggests, the prime ingredient in almost all dishes is egg, and there's no other meat on offer. To some, this may seem a little disappointing, but I have no idea why it should be. As Mr Yogesh said, if they wanted the other accompaniments like ham and/or bacon (which typically go well with eggs, the classic English breakfast), there are a lot of other joints for that, and also, serving only eggs gives the place a sort of exclusivity that the others don't enjoy, sort of a USP that is unique by all standards. And surely, skipping meat and substituting it with eggs, once in a while, shouldn't be that big an issue. They also whip up dishes without the yolks upon request, and have an extremely fancy list of dishes.

Onto the food, and we had decided to eat as much as we could and get the best this place had to offer. We started off with the tomato & mozzarella crostini

and the mushroom pepper crostini.

While Mr P thought the mushroom pepper was the better of the two, I'm a sucker for cheese and mushrooms, so I had to give equal points for both, and both scored very high. Mr VP, as usual, couldn't make up his mind which one was better and was the undecided voter in this survey (there are always a few of these undecided chaps in every poll).

We then moved on to omelettes. Apologies for the delay in clicking the pictures; we were having a very nice conversation with Mr. Yogesh and so I remembered only when we were half done with the omelettes. Mr P had an Irish omelette, which had onions, chives and lemon juice (sorry for the late click, but Mr P had devoured most of it before I realised I had to click),

Mr VP had a Spanish omelette which had kidney beans, onions, tomatoes, peppers-basically, the works,

and I settled for the broccoli and mushroom omelette.

All the omelettes came with slices of toasted bread and with butter and jam separately. We'd already wolfed down the toasted bread with half the omelettes before I remembered to click away, but I can say with full authority that the omelettes are big and not a cheap excuse for an omelette. The toasted bread and butter & jam teleported me back to the days when I was a child and would make my triple decker egg sandwich after reading of Jughead's exploits in Archie comics. All the omelettes tasted good (they'd better have, coz if you can screw up an omelette, then you shouldn't be running a kitchen, let alone a restaurant!).

And away we marched towards the next meal. We were trying to sample one from each section (and there were plenty of sections). We ordered a garden frittata (Mr Yogesh's recommendation),

a piperade 6 inch sub, which had egg and mushrooms with the usual stuffings of onions , lettuce, etc.,

and two rice curry combos: the spicy onion egg curry,

and a son-in-law curry (a Thai dish with golden boiled egg and tamarind with roasted peanut sauce) [sorry, but the picture seems to have vanished from my phone]. The use of tamarind was a little aggressive, but not to the point where you couldn't eat it. My only regret is that we didn't cancel one of the rice dishes for a pasta dish (especially since there was a line in the menu that read: Italian pasta at Indian prices :) ). Nevertheless, the food we had was amazing and if the staff at the Egg Factory promised satisfaction, they delivered it on all counts, and how! We made sure we left a little room for dessert, and had a poor Knights of Windsor, which was bread with raisins, fried with butter and jaggery and sprinkled with cherry shavings, served as a sizzler,

and a regular caramel custard because the other dessert we wanted to have(a strawberry filled omelette soufflé) wasn't available.

After the meal, the only thing running through my head was why didn't I live close to St. Mark's Road. The Egg Factory is an amazing place for those who can manage to put an egg down their throats without worrying about the holy repercussions. Credit cards aren't accepted right now and Mr Yogesh informed us that it was because the companies that lend the machines to swipe have become a bit strict and expect you to have stayed in business for about 6 months before they issue a machine, so for the time being, cash rules, although they do accept the Sodexho food coupons as well (which to me is a boon).

And did I mention that the best thing about this place is that it's an all day diner (from 8 AM to 10 PM), so even if you're hungry at say 5 PM around Lavelle Road or St. Marks' Road, and most other restaurants are closed, this place would be open, and you go in and tuck away into one of the desserts or wraps or subs, if not an omelette, or all of the mentioned. A nice walk in the nearby park or on Lavelle Road would help after the meal, as it did for us.

Food: Superb
$$$: Complete value for money
Service: Decent, prompt
Verdict: My favourite place in Bangalore! That should be all you need to hear.

The Egg Factory, 29, White House, Ground Floor, Behind Dewar's Wine shop, Opposite State Bank of India Head Office, St. Mark's Road, Bangalore - 01.