Six o'clock. Two people, no music yet, and the extraction fan doing most of the talking. The first job is the dough, because everything downstream waits on it. Flour, water, a little salt, mixed until it is smoother than it looks like it needs to be, then covered and left alone for two hours.
That resting time is not padding. A freshly mixed dough fights back when you roll it and springs into a thicker wrapper than you wanted. Rested, it goes where it is pushed. There is no way to hurry this part, which is why the alarm is set for five and not seven.
While the dough rests, the fillings are made and the broth goes on. Ginger and garlic are done by hand rather than in the processor — a blade heats what it cuts, and you can taste the difference in something this simple. The achar tomatoes are charred directly on the flat top until the skins split.
By eight the folding starts, and it does not really stop until the lunch service is under way. A tray holds sixty. On a Saturday the kitchen will fold well past a thousand before the doors open, and every one of them is folded by someone standing at that bench, not by a machine.
By eleven the room sounds like a restaurant again. But the part that decides how the day goes happened three hours earlier, with two people and a bowl of dough.
