The famously vegetarian state of Gujarat in northwestern India is also famously dry. And yet after dark in many large cities, out come the laaris, street food carts, many trafficking in an endless variety of egg dishes well-suited to meet the restorative demands of anyone who happens to have imbibed. Eggs—boiled, fried, folded into omelets, simmered in curries, swaddled in chapati, scrambled with rice, or even sandwiched between grilled white bread—are a popular street food (and hangover preventative) all over India.
“We thought there’s this really popular concept,” says Lay Patel. “It’s new and it’s getting hyped up. We don’t have something like this where we live.”
I worked my way through just a fraction of its lengthy (eggspansive?) menu, and if there’s one unifying characteristic it’s that these egg dishes are extraordinarily rich, thanks largely to their common cooking medium: butter—not ghee—produced by Gujarat’s Amul Milk Union Limited, an iconic cooperative credited with sparking India’s White Revolution in the 70s, which made the country the world’s largest dairy producer.
Eds. note: This story has been updated to correct that Ahmedabad is the former capital.
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