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Egg'xult in the anda funda

An engineer turned management guru, Yogesh Mokashi has ensured the humble egg gets its due among foodies.

This quintessential biz whiz answered the proverbial question — what came before, the egg or the chicken without even aspiring to. And that’s the beauty of Yogesh Mokashi’s brainwave, the Egg Factory, that opened doors in 2008 as a neighbourhood diner. With it, the humble portly egg waddled in as base ingredient, and today, they are five outlets strong and hoping to create an “eggy” experience now that the business end is running smoothly. When Yogesh and his two friends – Ajith Pai (the largest grower of lettuce in the Nilgiris that supplies to chains like McDonald’s and KFC) and Rajesh Pai (an engineer who started Kanua and is behind the design firm Red Earth) decided to open this “egg”straordinary chain, it was a coming together of Yogesh’s business school T.A. Pai Management Institute’s university town memories, where the egg was a constant in eateries, and the partners decided they had stumbled upon a win-win with the versatility of the ordinary anda.

An engineer, management beckoned Yogesh’s constantly evolving understanding of business, and after an MBA, stints with Berger Paints, Coke, HDFC and consulting, the travelling marketing whiz decided to crack the egg code and hit “bull’s eye” on a diner that serves eggs in all shapes, sizes, preparations and cuisines, celebrating a Bengaluru and its melting pot of diverse cultures.
What made a difference was he sincerely believed there was an opportunity to create a differentiated casual neighbourhood diner. “I didn’t have any food background. A lot of university towns, especially Manipal where I went to B-School had numerous restaurants with eggs on the menu and hardly any dishes were repeated — it was an extremely versatile ingredient,” explains Yogesh, who is the brains behind menu curation, food, finance and production, with his partner Rajesh designing the simple yet classic lines of the comfort-oriented and contemporary outlets with his firm Red Earth, under the aegis of The Soul Food Company. It’s a diner where, Yogesh feels, one would be comfortable in shorts, a t-shirt and flip-flops or even a stiff tie!

“We decided to use eggs as it’s a huge differentiator and it has held us in good stead. All our outlets are doing well. We have a fair amount of brand recognition and people keep coming back, which is the greatest story for a restaurateur. We recently added meat, chicken primarily to our menu,” says the vegetarian and eggetarian. “As long as we are serving chicken, we are still true to what we are,” he smiles.

Simplicity arising out the humble egg, the nondescript and ordinary anda has been given an easy-on-the-pocket address celebrating its adaptable plumpness.
Yogesh Mokashi’s ten-year-old daughter loves the vast menu at Egg Factory, and he feels that the chain is his most cherished life’s moment, chuckling that “being married to the same person for 17 years” is the other achievement! His sense of humour and amateur chef yearnings aside, the menu is extensive and awakens some pretty serious slurps, and we can thank the egg for it. “We spoke to a lot of people, got home recipes, researched with professional chefs, cookbooks and the Internet to curate our menu, which we try and change atleast thrice a year, if not more. We are going to totally refresh it in June, and concentrate more on the experience now,” explains Mokashi, a Kendriya Vidyalaya (Malleswaram) student who went to Mysuru for engineering studies. With an exhaustive menu, it truly takes an egg lover to EGGstacy! Be it Oyako donburi or akoori, khao suey, pasta or just regular anda dishes.

An amateur photographer too, Mokashi’s Canon 60 is his favoured travel companion, as wanderlust is close to his heart, be it for a serene Andaman vacation or just in the thick shrubbery of a local forest. Mokashi’s plans are large, but grounded in reality, which in the current hospitality scenario, is refreshing and sensible. “Fructification of a plan is a problem. We want to be Bangalore’s own diner and even if we decide to go out of the city, we want to carry a piece of Bangalore with us, because it is home. It’s my firm belief that what works, is our crossover of an individual standalone restaurant scaled up to a certain number of units, and to achieve consistency, we have invested in a central kitchen,” adds the man who likes cooking for pleasure.

The boy from Dharwad whose father worked with the central government was born in Hyderabad but never lived there, and spent his early years traipsing across the country, thanks to his father’s job. Calling Bengaluru his home since 1985, the Egg Factory is his, Rajesh and Ajith Pai’s totally Bengaluru offering which has an outlet in Manipal, apart from one in St Marks Road, JP Nagar, Whitefield and RMV.

An avid reader, Mokashi is tripping on Scandinavian mysteries like the Martin Beck, Kurt Wallander and Harry Hole series of Jo Nesbo but his heart lies in the multitude of possibilities of the egg and how to make this universal ingredient crack the secret to simplicity.

( Source : Deccan Chronicle. )
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