It’s time to get adventurous with eggs.
The chicken egg is everything. We eat it for breakfast, we eat it for dinner, we use the whites to froth up cocktails, we use them to make baked goods. But there’s so much more in the world of edible bird eggs to explore, from quail to pheasant to emu to ostrich.
Dave Santos, chef at the West Village restaurant Louro, which has become known as an eatery that takes risks, said experimenting with other types of eggs was natural for him. He was someone who ate a lot of breakfast for dinner, and he realized he could get more variety out of that habit by eating other eggs.
“It came from my love for eggs,” he said. “It became a fun thing to explore.”
And explore, he has. Santos serves a scrambled emu egg on his dinner and brunch menu, and has experimented with pheasant, ostrich, turkey and duck eggs.
What’s the difference between all the eggs? They all have yolks and whites, but each one tastes a little different and has a slightly different consistency. Santos says he’s found a correlation between the bird and the bird’s egg: they taste similar. Makes sense.
We asked Santos to guide us through the different types of edible eggs. We’ve ranked them, from smallest to biggest. (Important to note, there are many other kids of bird’s eggs that are edible, but as Santos says, where are you going to get them?
If you like eggs (and of course you do), read on…
