‘I panic. It turns to rubber’: could I learn to make omurice, the ‘world’s hardest omelette’?

Among the endless videos of cute animals, influencer vlogs and celebrity content, something unusual has been going viral across social media recently: omelettes. A far cry from the usual solid egg slabs served in cafes, these bright yellow omelettes are a fluffy, oval-shaped treat filled with unctuous liquid curds, which are typically sliced open to unfurl across a mound of rice. Called omurice, the Japanese dish has been called “the world’s hardest omelette to make”.

London-based software engineer Jeremy Ocampo, who goes by the social media tag OmuricePapi, has spent the past six months documenting his journey to perfect the art of the omurice online. In the process he has amassed 110,000 followers on YouTube and more than 68,000 on Instagram. “I’m Filipino, so I grew up eating rice and eggs every day, but it took going to Japan for the first time in 2025 to have my mind blown by omurice,” he says. “I was hooked: the presentation of slicing it open over your rice makes it so alluring, while you can’t replicate that texture of egg in any other dish. It’s so unique that when I got home, I decided to teach myself how to do it.”

Read the feature in the Guardian.

[This piece was published on 26/07/26]