It is eaten in bites and with stained hands. The concept is simple: a brioche bread sandwich filled with scrambled eggs with different toppings. The recipe, easy, rich and cheap, is the center of a business started by two 22-year-old women called Scrambledwhose success is not surprising if we take into account how much the Spanish love eggs.
The place opened three months ago a few meters from Madrid’s Gran Vía with this unique dish, which can be bought as a menu with chips and a soft drink for only 9.90 euros. We say “local” because it is not a restaurant, but a take-out service, although from time to time customers arrive looking for a table to eat their sandwich. They all end up trying not to throw the whole egg on themselves while they sit at a counter in the small establishment.
Naia Parra and Sandra Lauzurica met in the Basque Country while studying Leadership, Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the university. It was precisely in those years when they went on Erasmus to South Korea, the country where they got the idea of bringing this type of sandwich to Spain. “We bought them to take away and they were perfect for our student budget,” says Lauzurica. “People are hell-bent on saying we make Korean-style sandwiches, but the reality is that it’s not a Korean recipe, it’s really much more American. It’s just that we met them there, but this could have happened to us in New York.”
In those years, they did not consider having their own business: it was various coincidences, she explains, that have gradually led her down the entrepreneurial path. They do recognize that having studied Entrepreneurship at university helped them make the leap. When they arrived in Madrid to do their university internships, they realized that there could be room for a product like theirs and it didn’t take them long to get down to work: “We really like the world of hospitality in Madrid. It has a lot of innovation, and you can always try new things”, they say.
Like any small business project, they began by testing the product with friends and acquaintances, incorporating ingredients such as all i smell spicy, goat cheese or truffle sauce to bring it closer to the national taste. After reaping some success among their close circles, they completed the establishment search between the months of May and November. On December 3, after giving the place a facelift, they opened their doors for the first time. The beginnings were hard: “We worked very long shifts to investigate what time more people entered the premises,” recalls Sandra.
The sandwich has artisanal brioche bread toasted in butter and two scrambled eggs: before they were free-range, but after the case of salmonellosis in the Casa Dani tortillas -in which at the end the eggs were innocent– decided not to take risks and work with pasteurized. It can be ordered in five varieties: avocado, bacon with cheese, pulled pork or Heura, and also with truffled mayonnaise. They all cost 6.90 euros, except the avocado one, which is 7.50. The house favorites are the one with bacon and cheese -the all i smell It is really spicy and comes in generous quantities- and the one with sliced mushrooms, Parmesan and sweet may. After trying them, we understand the success of the combination: it is tasty, successful, and filling for little money.
Revuelto is not a bar where you have a first date: it is a place to devour, get your hands dirty and be covered in sauce and butter. It is also an option for almost any meal of the day: breakfast with a coffee, lunch if ordered from the menu or even for a snack in the nearby Plaza de Pedro Zerolo.
It’s 12 noon, the store has just opened and people are starting to come in to order their breakfasts. Francisco Martínez comes to Revuelto for the first time. He has met it on Instagram and wants to try it: “It’s very difficult to eat, but it tastes great,” he says after the first bite. He has ordered the avocado one with a latte. “It’s not very sexy if you’re meeting someone you want to impress, but the flavor is very good,” he continues as he gobbles down the sandwich.
It took Parra and Lauzurica more than six months to find the perfect place in Madrid for Revuelto, until they found the venue at calle Víctor Hugo, 5. The beginning was difficult: “Nobody came through the door,” recalls Lauzurica. Things changed quickly one day when an influencer had plans in Madrid made a reel about their sandwiches that became a trend: It has more than 480,000 views so far. By the time the tiktokers started to arrive, this one started to fill up. However, they do not relax: they know that success could have been a flash of a day. “There’s a boom right now with Revuelto, but we don’t know how long it will last. For now, many people repeat, and that’s good. We have to see if this continues like this or if people start to get bored with the product and stop coming. So we want to do things slowly.”
With the content creators came the long queues, of more than 40 minutes, that began to form at the doors of the premises. Lauzurica assures that they produce more than 100 scrambled eggs a day, and twice as many on weekends: once they run out, they would rather stop selling than damage the quality of the product by wanting to make more. That is why there is a sign on the front door that reads: Until sold outthat is, while stocks last.
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