In Malopara, Rajshahi, a shop faced in blue tile stands so close to the Jorakali temple that it is hard to say where one ends and the other begins.

A glass case of sweets sits to the left of the door, a curtain of purple print hangs in the window to the right, and a red motorbike is parked out front. Above the entrance a banner carries the name, Jorakali Mistanna Bhandar, and pictures of the sweets inside.

Nothing about the place announces a reputation, yet by early morning the doorway is crowded.

The closeness is not an accident of town planning. The shop is part of the temple. Whatever is sold across the counter pays for the shrine next door, and that arrangement, more than any recipe, is why the place has lasted.

Sri Kanta Barman, who runs the shop now, speaks in numbers before he speaks in memories. At least 30 kilograms of sweets leave the counter every day, he says. Rasgulla, kalojam and gurer sandesh go fastest. 'Usually it is around 30 kilos. Some days each of these sells 40 kilos on its own.'

Ask him when the shop began and the numbers go quiet. He cannot say for certain. The locals are surer: British period, they tell you, and over ninety years old. Some say nearer a hundred.

The story, as it is told in Malopara, goes back to that era, when an ancestor of a man known as Radha Thakur founded both the temple and the shop. The family had come from Odisha.

After Radha Thakur died, Sri Nityananda Thakur took charge of the temple, and he too was of Odia descent. The shop in those days was a modest affair: bamboo matting and a tin shed. It was made permanent about thirty-eight years ago.

When Nityananda Thakur died, Sri Krishna Kumar Majumdar took over, and it was in his time, people say, that the shop's name began to travel.

Thirty kilos a day comes to nearly eleven tonnes of sweets over a year, sold from a place that, within living memory, was bamboo and tin.

Still, the sweets are only half of it. The morning belongs to something plainer. Luchi and vegetable curry draw a crowd of their own, close to a hundred people a day, and most finish with a sweet.

A hundred breakfasts is a small crowd by a city's measure. By the measure of one kitchen and one pan, it is a hard morning's work.

Anwar Hossain is one of them. He works for a private company and his home is in Natore, a district away. He eats here often, and he does not hedge.

"You get the best luchi and vegetable curry in Rajshahi here. The taste is different. It is such an old shop, and still the taste has not slipped."

Barman's explanation is plain.

First, the oil. "We do not use the burnt oil from the day before.” The luchi is fried a little firm, in deep oil, until it puffs into what people call phulko. A customer who wants less oil need only say so.

The vegetables go in together: potato, papaya, carrot, sweet pumpkin and a few more, cooked down to something close to labra. A little panch phoron goes in. "That is why the taste is different,” he said.

Oil is the one ingredient a customer cannot check. A sweet can be judged by its colour, a curry by its smell. Yesterday's oil sits in the pan and shows itself, if it shows at all, only as a flatness at the back of the tongue. Throwing it out each day is a cost nobody sees and nobody thanks him for.

Raghunath has watched all this for more than twenty-five years. He calls Barman dada, elder brother, and he calls the shop a hotel, in the old Bengali sense of a place to eat rather than sleep.

"The hotel dada runs is not only for business. The temple next door is kept going by what this hotel earns. So the quality of the food will always be good. We make sure of that."

He says one more thing, as a house rule rather than a boast. 'And the food is for everyone. People of every religion can eat here without worry.'

The shop's two trades meet on the plate: the luchi and vegetables that fill the morning, the sweet that closes it, and the temple paid for by both. It asks a good deal of a town.

Anyone may walk in, and nobody may inspect the pan. A kitchen kept by a temple has to be trusted by people of every faith, on its word and the taste on the tongue.

Raghunath does not treat it as a burden. Another batch of luchi comes out of the pan, and another customer takes a seat.

The day ends the way it began, with the oil. Whatever is left after the last plate will not go into tomorrow's luchi. It is poured away, and in the morning the pan is filled again.

Out in Malopara the temple stands next door, as it has for ninety years or nearer a hundred. Nobody has found the exact year.

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Mahmud Newaz Joy is a freelance feature writer based in Bangladesh