While scouting places for a quick bite during office lunch break, I stumbled upon The Egg Stop and Mexican Chicken Poppers in Seethammadhara. It’s one of the few places in this residential area with spacious indoors and air conditioning. I entered with just an expectation of a decent meal in the AC, but by the time I had walked out of the restaurant I had already recommended the omelette café to friends in the city. The Egg Stop and Mexican Chicken Poppers have different menus but they share the roof and kitchen. The Egg Stop, a Kerala-based franchise has branches in India, UAE, Malaysia and Dubai.The Mexican Chicken Poppers, an exclusive to the Indian market, is an add-on to The Egg Stop.
Like most fast food restaurants, orders are taken at the counter. But unlike them, here one has to wait for at least 15 minutes and sometimes even half and hour, depending on what you have ordered. Nevertheless, it’s worth the wait. The Egg Stop offers 150 different varieties of omelettes. In the Visakhapatnam franchise, it has about 15 different omelettes in the menu, which keep changing depending on the response of the customers. All omelettes are made of three to four eggs and served with a huge slice of bread. I tried the Indo–Mexican omelette, three sunny side up omelettes placed over an omelet with Mexican sauce base, followed by a fluffy Jamaican cheesy omelette. This omelette was made after beating egg whites with milk and placing stripes of cheese slices on top. They also have meat-based omelettes like the shredded chicken omelette and kebab omelette. The health-conscious folks will enjoy the distinct taste of fresh chicken in former over the frozen meat in the latter.
After four omelettes, I was thirsty. So I ordered an egg soda, one of the trademark egg-based drinks. It was basically a mint mojito blended with egg white. The egg white’s taste doesn’t stand out, so go for the egg soda without any second thoughts, unless you don’t want extra proteins. The Egg Stop has rice meals as well. I had the Japanese omurice, which is tomato rice wrapped inside an omelette crepe. I found it to be a perfect meal for lunch. All rice-based dishes have ample quantity. And their presentation will make you share an update on social media. Chikkam Sandeep, manager, The Egg Stop, said, “We had to increase the rice quantity as per the customers’ expectation. Luckily, we can tweak the menu as per the feedback.” Mexican Chicken Poppers’s menu isn’t innovative but gets points for not using frozen meat (except for nuggets, fish and seekh kabab). I tried the chicken stick, chipotle chicken salad and chipotle dynamite chicken. And if there was a competition, the eggs definitely came first. Currently, the menu has seasonal mango pulp drink, made by blending fresh mango with little milk and no sugar. It’s the closest thing to aam raas in the city. You can also find French toast and egg salads on the menu. The chocolate French toast is a must-have, but don’t expect chocolate to ooze like in choco-lava cake.