Who came first: the chicken or the egg? What happened first: Jodhpur’s Omelette Shop becoming famous or the coverage in Lonely Planet making it so?
The shop, opened in 1974 by Ram Kishen, is one busy shop. Selling a thousand eggs a day, half of them as omelletes and the rest boiled. Spiced to taste, with our without slices of bread, these cost as little as Rs. 10-15 (20-30 cents) a portion. It opens at 10 am, and closes just before midnight. Go at peak hours and Ram Kishen will have no time to talk to you. The clientele are mostly travellers in the day, and locals in the evening.
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There are signboards flaunting it being a place recommended not only by Lonely Planet, but by Rough Guides as well as some Korean and Thai guide book series. It gives its address in the Sardar Market as ‘just through the gate behind the clock tower on the northern side of the square by the inner arch.’ A warning is added: ‘Don’t be fooled by imitations.’
Ram Kishen admits business has never been as good as following an inclusion in Lonely Planet in 1999. He has even been able to save enough to buy his elder son a shop of his own. And extended his offering to include cigarettes, camera films, soft drinks and mineral water besides running a telephone booth. All is a space of a few square feet on a roadside where customers stand and eat.
The place, still marked so, was earlier called Garib Hotel (or poor man’s hotel) where bread, chicken, rice and vegetables were sold very cheap mostly for the labour class. But Ram Kishen, a Sindhi Khatri, says he became a changed man after a visit to the Golden Temple in Amritsar in 1980. He was heavily into drinking and was a non-vegetarian before that; he gave it all up after the trip and is now a strict vegetarian.
He is not worried who came first, as long as his vendors send him a thousand fresh eggs daily.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
He seems to be pretty popular, going by those books. Did not see much crowd there when I ordered an omelette there last winter.
Indians can sell anything anywhere. They are so determined which in a way is good.
Hi Arun…I guess he has his times of the day when the crowd picks up.
LOL Nisha… Our entrepreneurship is tough to beat.