Three Great Japanese Egg Dishes and Where to Find Them

Egg Hentai

The first time I was faced with the possibility of having to eat a raw egg, I was eleven or twelve. I was mortified. I was on some godforsaken wilderness survival excursion, and it was breakfast. At this point, many years later, most of that morning has become indistinct. We were given some very bare provisions. The full contents of which, I cannot recall. What I remember quite clearly though are an egg, a carton of milk, and my abject horror. You had two matches, and if you could not start a fire after two tries, you could not cook your eggs. And you had to eat something. This was The Nature. And you were expected to do activities while in The Nature, so calories were going be to essential in your survival of this weekend in hell. If your fire did not start, your best option, other than faking a stomach ache and getting sent to the medic for real nutrition like concentrated Gatorade gel, was to open your milk and crack your egg into it, shake vigorously(!), and drink. To my tender sensibilities weened on spaghetti with tomato sauce and chicken nuggets, this was a total affront. An insult to everything good and decent in the world! Civilization had reached its lowest nadir, and we were truly but beasts in the wild! I badly, badly wanted to go home and play video games. Thank god I was able to start my fire on the second match.
Times change. People change. I still think of being outside in the wilderness with about as much excitement as one thinks of being thrown out of an airplane, but I’ve come full circle on eggs. On my first trip back to Korea since being sent away as a baby, I was eating at the superior curry chain Abiko Curry. I looked across the room at other diners to see that you could order toppings! Among them being a raw egg. My Korean was and is very bad, which is probably why I didn’t see this sooner on the written menu, but I was intrigued. It made complete sense that that molten pool of curry would be infinitely enhanced by the addition of a creamy egg swirled into it. Upon my next visit, I managed to sputter out that I wanted an egg with my curry, and that was that. I have never eaten curry without one since. And now that I live in Japan, where eggs are several times more delicious than they are other places, I eat them with just about everything. Rarely does a meal pass that I do not consume some luscious incarnation of the ovum. If there is an egg hiding anywhere on a menu, I will find it and I will eat it.
And that is saying a lot. Eggs are virtually ubiquitous in Japanese life. According to statistics, the average Japanese person consumes roughly 320 eggs every year. I know that I have certainly done my part to bring up this average. And we are going well beyond simply just fried, poached, or boiled. Different preparations of the simple ingredient are multitudinous. On Mount Hakone, you can eat both egg flavored soft serve and eggs that have been turned black from being cooked in sulphur springs. The seasoned ajitama are an inescapable feature of ramen everywhere. Onsen tamago or bath eggs, appear as a topping in almost every place you encounter donburi. And then there are those ads where Tommy Lee Jones is being spoon-fed omurice by a painfully chirpy young girl in a maid cafe. Who would not secretly desire this experience for themselves? And there is much more than that to covet. Here are three examples of what you could be eating:

Café Ouefs

Breve lattes are decadent. Especially the ones clocking in at 20oz and up. That is a lot of hot fat. A whole lot. And in the end, what are you getting? Rich and creamy though it is, it doesn’t really taste like much. Nevermind that the coffee itself is hopelessly lost amidst all that extra liquid. I am not, in any way, about to make the puritanical case for black coffee or, god forbid, eating less fat. I just want you to eat better fat. Tastier fat. At Café de l'Ambre in Tokyo’s Ginza district, you can order a Café ouefs–black coffee with a raw whipped egg yolk swirled into the cup. Milk is still mostly water, but an egg yolk is chiefly fat. So when you eliminate all that extra liquid, the coffee achieves a lusciousness that milk just cannot reach. The drink turns a burnished ochre and tastes like the liquified centers of Chinese egg buns. Put another way, it is the difference between thickening a sauce with cornstarch versus thickening it with blood. One is a milquetoast childhood in the suburban Midwest. The other is being wasted in Paris with Henry Miller. And there is nothing puritanical about that.

Café de l'Ambre
104-0061
Tokyo, Chuo-ku
Ginza 8-10-15

Curry Pan

Japan has devised a number of curry delivery systems beyond the standard curry and rice. Udon and ramen have both been given the curry treatment. Baked curry is the casserole you should have grown up with. And the convenience stores all carry nikuman (a Japanese interpretation of Chinese meat buns) that have been doctored up with curry. Then there is the curry pan. Sometimes referred to as a curry donut, curry pan are deep fried packages of dough that have been filled with a cooked down, spicy curry. My favorite, because I am a pervert that gets a thrill out of popping the yolks, are the ones that have a whole egg tucked inside. You can find these in a number of bakeries, but the curry chain Tenma is especially good at them. Through the power of science or just smart technique, the yolk is preserved in its raw, runny state. There is a sort of salacious joy in eating one of these. Biting into it will give a satisfying pop as the yolk bursts and gushes into your mouth. Pulling away, with a little golden ooze dripping over your lips, you see the egg sitting there exposed, naked. You wonder how they did this. The taste of what you’ve done lingers in your mouth. You wipe your lips. You go down again.

Multiple Locations:

Nakano Shop
164-001
Tokyo, Nakano-ku
Nakano 5-61-7

Shimokitazawa Shop
155-0031
Tokyo, Setagaya-ku
Kitazawa 2-12-12

TKG

This is it. Short of just cracking an egg in your mouth straight out of the bird, there is no purer way to eat an egg than this. A classic breakfast time staple in homes across the country, tamago kake gohan or TKG is everything good and wonderful in Japanese cooking: simple ingredients, ascetic technique, and something most Americans won’t eat raw. In its simplest form, you are given a bowl of hot rice, a little shoyu, and an egg. The egg is cracked over the rice and seasoned with a dash or two of shoyu. Everything is then whipped together with your chopsticks until thoroughly ooey and gooey, and that’s it. Breakfast! From here you are free to interpret as you see fit. Some people will take out the whites, making it more G rated. Others like to double down, pushing it firmly into R end of the scale. There are special sauces that have been specially formulated for just this dish. And a sprinkle of MSG is also pretty popular. A number of izakayas will put this on the menu with their own signature toppings, too. These range from basic nori and scallions to opulent shaved black truffles. TKG will be a foil for whatever you want to throw at it. Hot sauce, fried shallots, kimchi. Be as freaky as you want. It’s much more fun when it’s raw.

Tokyo CoKeCoCo (pictured)
166-0004
Tokyo, Suginami-ku
Asagayaminami 3-38-31

Juuban Ukyou (black truffles)
155-0031
Tokyo, Minato-ku
Azabu Juban 2-6-3