Balut: You want 12 day, 16 day, or 18 day?

Cebu, Philippines.

I've done the edible egg embryo before in other countries, but I've always wanted to try it in the Philippines. I first heard of this popular snack from perhaps a National Geographic article on the Philippines, and for years I wondered if I could stomach them. I have several times now.

They're duck embryos, but there was a rumor going around today in Cebu that a vendor had been spotted selling "chicken balut", which my acquaintences agreed was a silly idea and just didn't taste as good as the duck ones. I can't be sure; we didn't see him tonight.



As I said before, when I ate them in Cambodia, I actually quite liked them and it's probably my favorite tasting weird meat. I haven't tried them side-by-side, of course, but the Philippine balut resembled the Cambodian ones in every respect I can recall.

First you choose between 12 day, 16 day, and 18 day. The 12 day ones are just hard-boiled eggs with no embryonic development. The 16 day ones are further along but concensus was that these are just inferior to the king of balut -- exactly 18 days after being laid.



After you choose what kind you want, the vendor grabs them piping hot from the basket and passes you a little stool, salt, and a vinegar-onion sauce. You hold the hot egg and flick carefully but forcefully at the top of it with your middle finger. It cracks a bit and you gently remove a small hole from the top, so you can sip the savory broth before removing the whole shell. I agree that the 18-day one is better than the younger ones. You might come across some small chunkies but it's usually just eaten all the way through, in about 3 mouthful bites. You can see feathers, head, wings, and skeleton forming, but it's basically an extra-chewy easter egg. The flavor is savory and delicious; the texture satisfying. Match with a light pilsner beer.



If you're in Cebu City looking for the balut, I got mine from a street vendor at Fuente Osmena circle. He was really helpful and knowledgable, and proud of his product. The cool thing about traveling in the Philippines is that most everyone speaks English, so don't be shy to ask questions.
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Addition: Found more info on balut. The eggs are from the "itik duck" which is native to the Philippines. Itik mother ducks are lazy so humans have to incubate them after the mother ignores them. That explains a lot. More info here.

Fish Sh!t

Cebu City, Philippines.

Yesterday I did lunch at a food court in midtown Cebu City, Philippines. There's about 8 Filipino food counters with a wide selection of fast foods. Next to the Pizza Hut counter was Sugbahan Food Counter and that's where I got to try two bizarre seaweeds. In between these seaweeds was another green thing that looked like Japanese "green tea" cold soba noodles. You've probably seen those thin green noodles. But these turned out to be something other than soba. I asked the ladies behind the counter what each of these items were, but they were lazy and annoyed with my obviously silly and tedious questions. They just nodded and yawned when I asked if the green noodle things were noodles or not. So I just ate some as a side dish to the other weird stuff I had here. They tasted and acted like any other noodle.

But later that night ... I stumbled upon a remarkable and life-changing moment of truth about these innocuous green noodle wanna-be's. A truth that will go down as one of the most memorable weird meat moments.

After checking out the fried one-day-old-chicks and a vertical tasting of even younger birds(!), we were at a big shack restaurant watching some wanker croon on his acoustic guitar, and downing San Miguel beer at 25 cents a bottle. I wish the singer was downing beers as fast as us, perhaps his music would sound better. We escaped the music for a quick look at the culinary offerings -- fish in tanks, shelled creatures on ice, various sides. My friend and fearless guide Arnold wasn't quite sure what the English word was for this one delicacy, but he insisted we take a look and try to decipher exactly what they were. After several confirmations with the staff, we concluded these were definately fish feces. These "green noodles" are actually fish poop!



The discussion that took place to determine this would have been just perfect brilliant on video -- a truly comic kodak moment -- but unfortunately I didn't have it with me -- I do have still pics, however. Basically, they were either too polite to say it, or simply forgot all the words we use to describe what comes out of our butts. Fish butts too.

I suggested that perhaps there is no English word for this dish, other than a literal explanation. It's called "Lokot" in the local language, so now you know how to ask for it. I never dreamed of eating fish sh!t, but in the name of weird meat research, we soon had a plate of this crap and another bucket of beer. Besides, I'd already eaten it for lunch and thought it was fine.

The look and taste of the stuff is harmless, so without the knowledge of "what is this?", any timid but naive diner would slurp these up without question. They're (or it's ?) served raw, with a sprinkling of raw onions, maybe some parsley, and a clear, subtle, sweet-savory sauce.



Upon closer inspection, I realized I've seen fish poop like this before -- you know those aquarium fish you see with strings of fish poopoo hanging out their bottoms. Only this was bigger and more plentiful than the stuff in home aquariums. In fact, it was displayed between two enourmous fish heads, freshly decapitated, sitting in their own blood.

Raw fish poop? I wouldn't try this at home, and never without supervision.

* There's been quite a debate in the comments below about whether I was really eating shit or not. So far the most believable and acceptable response is this from Doodz: "It's actually digested seaweed, and it's really shit. It's not from fish, but rather, it's "trepang" shit, otherwise known as sea cucumbers."

Robinson's Food Court in Cebu

Cebu City, Philippines.

I grabbed a few cans of different Philipino beers from the supermarket and carefully looked through all the food court offerings, asking questions as I went along. Most of the "help" couldn't care less about my little project and tried to dodge my questions -- but I persisted. I ruled out any un-weird items, or items I've had before, or things that really were not all that weird like, oh there's some tiny crabs. I've had all kinds of crabs. Crabs aren't really weird.

So here's what I settled on: various goat innards, pig intestines, pig lungs, and a mystery "green noodle" which I'll explain in a separate article. I also ate two unusual seaweeds, which aren't really meat, but they're kinda weird. One looked like miniature green grape bunches on vines, and had a pleasant burst of juicy sweet saltiness. The other might be the same "sea beans" I had in San Francisco last month, they're little twig things and also kinda yummy.



Back to the meat... The piggy intestines were prepared two ways -- crispy fried, and non-crispy fried. I prefer the crispy. The un-crispy part was more juicy-meaty and reminded me of eel. No offense to eels. The pig lungs and goat lungs were a spongy/porous texture -- like a thicker, chewier, more flavourful beef tripe. There were also cubes of pork blood jello in the stew. Did I write about Chinese pork blood yet? Anyway, the goat-innards stew was nice and spicy, which I like, but not as crazy spicy as Thai food.



Americans eat plenty of innards too, they just don't like to know about it. Think of all the stuff that becomes filler for ground meat, sausage, hot dogs, spam, etc. But in many other countries, like the Philippines, people are generally OK with eating the innards as they are. In a country with such poverty, it would be unthinkable to waste any usable part of an edible animal. I assume the prime cuts, the steaks, go to those with money first, and the rest are left with the trimmings and tossings. So I guess the difference is, those with money can pretend like they're not really eating this stuff, but most of them are, it's just one step removed, processed and the source ignored and forgotten.

I Like Young Chicks

Philippines.

In the backpacker hotel area of Cebu City, we stopped at a restaurant/bar called Sideline. The staff here was super friendly and helpful to the weird meat team tonight. They layed out a plate of the raw, whole "one day old chicks" for our camera before serving us the plate of 20 batter-fried baby birds. You eat the whole things because the bones are so soft. I did spit out a few tiny feet parts because they were getting stuck in my teeth. At least I assume they were future feet parts. Would-be future feet, to be precise.



Everyone else rambled on in Cebuean (different from Tagalog), but "one day old chick" was always said in English. Unfortunately, the restaurant didn't have any "Lansiao" today, that's cow penis. I haven't done cow penis yet.



You might ask why one would eat a one-day-old-chick, when the bird could grow into a larger animal more efficient at feeding the people. Well, I asked, but all we could come up with was that people like the taste. I'll go along with that, they are pretty tasty. They're a beer snack, and we dipped them in vinegar and red chili sauce, between sips of Red Horse Extra Strong and San Miguel. It takes about two bites to consume one of these little birdies. If one-day-old-birds are too old for your taste, then try the balut.



[Special thanks to my assistant Arnold, who has a little shop with skate and punk clothes and accessories, and even CDs of independent Philipino rock bands. Cool stuff. The store is called Guerilla Wear and it's at Mango Square Mall in mid/uptown Cebu City, Gen.Maxilom Street off that main central north-south road.]

Chicken A$$

Manila, Philippines.

I dropped down to the Philippines for a quick vacation from China, hung out at the Cebu Shangri-La on Mactan Island for a few days. The food there was great but not many odd items to explore. They didn't offer much Filipino food there. Nice cocktails though. I didn't get to see much of Manila, and Cebu City's Carbon Market (a real deal third world wet market) was interesting to poke around but man I was not impressed with the food I saw there. There were few vegetables, and I didn't find any of the Philipine desserts I'd been searching for.

My first night in Manila, I wandered the streets looking for the weirdest meats. I had high hopes and expectations, but I had landed in the Malate district, with no connections, and found the place to be, well, lacking in Filipino food. I checked the stores and found little to interest me, except a little bottle of durian jam. Instead I found lots of fast food chains, many of them probably-failed-by-now in the home country ... like Shakey's Pizza. Remember them? Well they have them in the Philippines now.

I ended up eating at a yuppie cafe because I was exhausted and hungry and the food looked good and they were playing Detroit techno music and I'm a sucker for that as much as I'm a sucker for weird meat. After I filled up there, I finally found a row of skewer shacks. One of them had English signs for everything and in addition to the normal universal standards, they had one intriguing weird meat dish: "Chicken Ass". So I found room in my belly to fit one skewer of the chicken booty meat. It tastes like chicken. I know that's a trite cliche, but really the taste and texture were just like every other chicken meat I've had. In fact, you've probably eaten chicken fanny already. McNuggets? Probably some chicken patooty in those!



They probably had a laugh to see some foreigner walk in and eyes light up for the chicken butt, and nothing else. Chicken ass on a skewer.

Later I found an upscale Philipino restaurant that serves field crickets, fried froggies, balut embryo eggs, and "chicken tail" (polished terminology for the upscale crowd, eh?), but dining there just wouldn't fit into my schedule, so that's on the list for my next trip here. I'm already looking forward to it. The Philippines are a good travel alternative to Thailand -- less tourist hoards, amazing beaches, everyone speaks English. I'm coming back soon!