The first time I ate a fertilized duck egg was at a Vietnamese restaurant in New York City three years ago. I was headed to Vietnam in a few months and knew I’d be writing about something food related, so I spent the run-up to the trip eating as much Vietnamese food as I could. When I saw balut, as fertilized duck eggs are often referred to, on the menu, I knew I had to try it. But as if the chef expected no one to order balut, my dining companion and I were informed they were out of it. “You want us to go get some,” the server said, daring us. We called their bluff and soon enough someone from the restaurant was making a fertilized duck egg run to Chinatown. A few minutes later, the eggs were presented to my dining companion and I.
They weren’t good. They weren’t bad, either. If you closed your eyes and didn’t look at the little dead baby partially formed fetus duck pinched between your chopsticks you’d just think you were eating something very egg-y. My dining companion went for seconds but I think he was just showing off at this point.
I thought I’d sworn off eating duck fetuses but a few months later, there I was in Saigon, doing a story on Vietnamese-born New York chef and prolific restaurateur Michael ‘Bao’ Huynh for a New York Times travel article. The mission seemed easy enough: just go where he goes and eat what he eats. The rub, though, was that he was eating congealed pigs blood, rats, snakes and, of course, those fermented duck eggs.
I looked around and watched happy families inserting the aborted partially formed duckling carcasses into their mouths. I figured out there was a five-step system to eating balut:
1) Crack the top of the egg with a spoon.
2) Sip the broth from the hole in the top of the egg.
3) Enlarge the opening to bite off the boiled, cooked yoke.
4) Pull out the partially formed duck and eat it. Yum.
5) Go into the bathroom and vomit.
I’ll admit balut wasn’t my favorite – even rat was better – but one has to do such things in the name of journalism. Right? You don’t, of course, have to go all the way to Asia to eat balut. That Vietnamese restaurant on New York’s Lower East Side where I first ate a duck fetus is long gone. But there’s a new place proudly serving balut in New York City. The Filipino restaurant in the East Village called Maharlika. Or you can just stop by the very first balut eating contest on Saturday August 25 at 3 p.m., taking place at the Dekalb Market in Brooklyn, where 10 brave eaters will try to eat as many fertilized duck eggs in five minutes. It’ll be five minutes of unborn-duck-eating glory!
Nicole Ponseca, owner of Maharlika and sponsor of the eating contest, said, “Our goal is to push Filipino food forward. We’re the third largest minority in the US behind Mexicans and Chinese. But no one knows our food.” She added, “Some people ask why we’re putting balut on the menu. It might turn people off. But we have to be proud of our food. And I want it to cross over.”
I’m tired of pork. There, I said it. Pork belly, bacon, pulled pork, pork shoulder, pork terrines, charcuterie, head cheese, roasted suckling pig, porchetta, pancetta. I’m ready for this macho eating craze for all things piggy to finally go away.
I’m a very pork-patient sort of guy. Homer Simpson said it best in expressing his empuzzlement when his daughter Lisa became a vegetarian, asking what she could and couldn’t eat:
Homer: “What about bacon?”
Lisa: “No!”
Home: “Ham?”
Lisa: “No!”
Homer: “Pork chops?
Lisa: “No! Dad those all come from the same animal!”
Homer: “Yeah right, Lisa. A wonderful, magical, animal.”
Homer is right. But it’s time take an electrical prod to the head of this porcine passion. The straw that broke the pig’s back for me was when I noticed last week a restaurant down the street from my apartment in New York’s West Village opened up called Swine. It’s not all pork on the menu but it reads like a farce – a caricature unto itself – of 2012 menu trends, right down to the name of the restaurant itself.
As a nation increasingly obsessed with food our fetishization of pork is holding us back, arresting the development of our palates. Where’s the beef? Let’s go back to boring chicken for a while. What ever happened to tofu?
Oh, there are other food trends I’m tired of, too. See: deviled eggs, Brussels sprouts, bone marrow, beets, anything fried in duck fat, short ribs. I’m even tired of foie gras. And don’t get me started on the insanity that foodies exhibit every spring at the first (or second or third) sighting of ramps at a farmers market or on the menu of a restaurant (it usually goes something like this, “RAMPS! OMG, RAMPS!” and can be found on the social media of your choice.
Food trends ebb and flow – that’s why they’re trends, after all. Tapas was all the rage in New York and other American cities in the last decade, crossing the edible Spanish threshold into cuisines that have no history of serving food on small plates; the most comical I saw was something called “Australian tapas.” But this one, this proclivity for American-ish comfort food, is sticking around like bad leftovers left in the fridge during a long vacation. And it’s starting to reek. We’re in a recession, which means, like the big baby foodies that we are, we need to be comforted and held, spooned by porkliscious byproducts until the euphoric porcine food coma we put ourselves in takes us away.
For the record, I do think the “trend,” or “movement” might be a better word, of sourcing the provenance of our food is a good one. And I hope it sticks around. But do we need the economy to vastly improve before we change our eating habits? I just want this nation of eaters to graduate from what has become the poster animal of the relatively recent obsession with food. Is that so much to ask? In the meantime, I’m going to walk down to Swine to see if it’s still open.
Years ago, when I told a group of colleagues in New York that I was moving to Chicago, the reaction ranged from bemusement to outrage.
“Chicago?” one began, tentatively, as if they’d heard of the place but couldn’t quite place it. “Why would you want to live there?”
Another co-worker was more blunt.
“Chicago’s a dump,” he said. “You’ll be back in New York in a year.”
Like many New Yorkers who consider their city the capital of the world, he’d never actually been to Chicago, or anywhere else in “Fly Over Country.” My career ended up taking me away from Chicago after two stints totaling five years, but I never went back to New York, except for brief visits, and I never regretting moving to The Second City. How could I? I met the woman I would marry on my very first day in town.New Yorkers are always crowing that they live in the greatest city in the world. It is undoubtedly a singular place; perhaps the only can’t miss city in America for tourists alongside San Francisco. But I find all of the “We’re #1” bravado tiresome. There are a few things I like better in New York than Chicago – weather, weekend travel opportunities, pizza and bagels – but I’d much rather live in Chicago than New York for all of the following reasons.
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Less Attitude
Chicago attracts young people from all over the Midwest, so although it’s a big city, there’s a friendly, middle-of-America vibe. New Yorkers tend to be friendly towards tourists but rather hard on each other. When I lived in New York, I found that native New Yorkers were often friendlier than transplants.
I have a couple friends who are Staten Island natives, and I’ll never forget how newly minted Manhattan residents from other parts of the country would mock them as “Bridge and Tunnel” people. For me, the locals with the accents who live in the Outer Boroughs are the real New Yorkers, not all the transplants who live in Manhattan and look down upon everyone else as soon as they get a 212 area code.
More Affordable
According to Bankrate.com’s cost of living comparison, New York Metro’s cost of living is about 95% higher than Chicago’s. In the Windy City, you can buy a fairly nice three-bedroom home in a nice, close-in suburb with good public schools for about $450,000; whereas that same amount of money barely buys a small condo in a sketchy neighborhood in New York.
In New York, I lived in a neighborhood called Bay Ridge, a long subway ride from Manhattan near the Verrazano Bridge in Brooklyn, because I couldn’t afford to live closer to my office in Manhattan. But when I moved to Chicago, I felt like there were only a couple of neighborhoods that were completely off limits due to price.
Chicago is also cheaper to visit. I was in town last week for a visit and got a room at the Hyatt at Michigan Avenue and Wacker for $55 on Priceline. No chance you’ll get a nice room in NYC for that price.
Lake Michigan
There are more bike paths in New York now than when I lived there but there’s still nothing quite like Chicago’s killer lakefront, which has an 18-mile-long bike path and several very nice sandy beaches, including one just steps away from downtown.
Better Smells
Thanks to the Bloomer Chocolate Company, the sweet smell of chocolate permeates the West Loop neighborhood but New York has more foul smells than good ones. If you Google “New York smells” or “What does New York smell like” the most common results involve urine.
You Can’t Get Lost in Chicago
If you give me the east/west coordinates of any address in the city of Chicago, I’ll immediately know where it is, thanks to the city’s street coordinates system. Midtown and Uptown Manhattan are straightforward but the rest of the city’s a mess and God help you if you need to find something in Queens.
Billy Crystal and Yoko Ono Have no Apparent Connections to Chicago
Chicago has a few obnoxious celebs, but New York has scores of them. Donald Trump. Rush Limbaugh. The Jersey Shore kids. (some of whom are from NY rather than NJ) The list goes on and on.
Vintage Street Signs
Chicago has more vintage street signs than any city in the country and these old beauties are emblematic of the way the city preserves its past, rather than bulldozing it.
The Green Mill and B.L.U.E.S. on Halsted
New York also has its share of small, atmospheric jazz and blues music venues, but there’s nowhere I’d rather hear live jazz and have a stiff cocktail than the century old Green Mill in Uptown, and if I could hear blues in just one place in the world, it would be B.L.U.E.S. on Halsted, which features authentic live bluesmen and women 365 nights per year.
Conclusion
It’s silly to claim that one city is definitively better or worse than any other city. One man’s paradise is another man’s prison. But for me, Chicago’s the most livable big city in the country. It’s a place where it’s easy to meet people, easy to fit in, no matter who you are, and hard to leave.
There are harsh, long winters that stretch into hot, humid summers, legendary traffic tie-ups, and miles of boredom outside the city limits in every direction. But there’s something about Chicago – the neighborhoods, the architecture, the people, the vibe – that has hooked me in a way New York never did. It’s a huge city that still manages to be a well-kept secret.
California design junkies rejoice: Japanese retailer MUJI recently announced that it will open its first West Coast location in San Francisco‘s SOMA district this fall. With 7,250 square feet of retail space, the new store will be the fifth and largest MUJI location in the United States.
MUJI has developed a cult following in the design community for producing simple, functional lifestyle items that are high on quality and low in price. The MUJI retail environment mirrors this streamlined approach, with spare design, soft lighting and Zen music in each of the chain’s four New York City locations.
While the store sells everything from notebooks to frying pans to organic cotton T-shirts, travelers will be especially pleased to find a wide range of well-designed travel accessories. The store’s assortment of bags, pouches, cases, bottles, containers and dividers will revolutionize the way you pack, as well as introduce a touch of Japanese simplicity into your travel experience.
Though officials are tight-lipped, rumor has it that New York City‘s much-anticipated Citi Bike share program will launch this month. As we previously reported, Citi Bike will provide residents and tourists with the opportunity to borrow from 10,000 bikes parked in 600 stations scattered across Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. Pricing for the privately run system will range from $9.95 for a 24-hour pass to $95 for an annual membership.
While Citi Bike is a welcome addition to New York’s transportation scene, tourists might be wary of tackling the streets of Manhattan, and for good reason. Between bumpy roads, unclear signage, reckless taxicabs and texting pedestrians, the city’s streets are not for the faint of heart.
But once you get over the initial fear, New York can be a magical place to explore on two wheels. We spoke with a handful of avid city cyclists, who shared their tips for staying safe while making the most of your bike share experience.
1. Research your route. “Study a map of NYC before you go out to get a sense of what areas are easy to bike,” suggests Eva Mohr, an avid cyclist whose biking e-commerce shop, All That I Want, launches this fall. Google Maps offers a way to search bike routes online and through its Android app. iPhone users should invest $1.99 in the Ride the City app, which generates a number of routes from “Safest” to “Direct.” The New York City Department of Transportation (DOT) also publishes a free City Cycling Map, available for download and in select locations throughout the city.2. Obey the traffic rules. “Bicyclists have the same traffic rules as motorists,” says Alison Lucien, founder of Eleanor’s NYC, a bicycle accessories shop for women. “The ticket for running a red light on a bike is the same as for a driver, with the exception that bicyclists do not have to pay the surcharge.” Laws on riding recklessly and against the flow of traffic also apply.
3. Wear a helmet, advises Mohr. If you plan to do a lot of city biking, it’s worth the luggage space to pack your own safety gear. NYC’s DOT reports that in 97 percent of biking fatalities, the rider was not wearing a helmet. Though bike share programs in cities like London, Boston and Washington, DC, report low levels of accidents and fatalities, it’s better to be safe than sorry.
4. Dress brightly. Wearing bright clothing can attract the attention of motorists, especially at night. Plus, “neons and bold prints are all the rage in fashion, so it shouldn’t be hard,” says Lucien.
5. Follow bike lanes, but remain alert. “Unlike in established bicycle countries like Holland, the bike lane is not well respected in many areas – by vendors and crowds who treat it as a private sidewalk or by delivery vans and cabs that pull into it without warning,” says Nona Varnado, who designs urban cycling and multi-sport apparel for women and blogs about biking culture at The Bird Wheel. “It’s getting better all the time, but a bike lane still requires staying alert.”
6. Don’t be afraid to make some noise, advises Lucien. “Ring your bell and shout out, ‘heads up!’ when pedestrians walk out in front of you.”
7. Beware of taxis. “Watch out for cabs that stop on the side of the street and be prepared for doors to open unexpectedly,” says Mohr. “If you are riding a cab yourself, always make sure to check for cyclists first before opening the door.”
8. Watch out for pedestrians. It’s common for unaware pedestrians to step into the road without looking both ways, especially when they’re preoccupied in conversation or tapping away on their smartphones. Large vehicles like trucks and busses can also hide these sneakers. “While you pass a bus, keep your hands on the brakes at all times,” suggests Lucien.
9. Wear clothes you feel comfortable in. While flowing dresses and flimsy sandals may be popular summer attire for women, they’re often impractical for the rigors of city biking. “If you wear a dress, use a skirt garter not only to protect your clothes from getting dirty, but also to prevent the dress from getting tangled in the spokes,” advises Mohr.
10. Once you get comfortable, feel free to venture off the beaten path. “Smaller neighborhoods and side streets are best seen on a bike and tend to be less busy,” says Varnado. “This is where the real NYC is. By riding a bike you can see amazing things you’d never experience any other way.”