Despite being Filipino, I successfully dodged trying balut, a hard-boiled duck embryo, until last week. In the Philippines, the fertilized duck egg is a typical street snack. Here, it’s served in a distinctly different setting: Abacá, the modern Filipino restaurant in the Kimpton Alton hotel in Fisherman’s Wharf.
More than a decade into a career that requires eating and drinking pretty much anything set in front of me, I don’t have many culinary “firsts” left. But for some reason, balut was never high on my list to seek out. In advance, I studied up by watching countless videos of people cracking open a beige eggshell to reveal a tiny, partially formed bird inside. I even brought along The Standard’s business editor Kevin Truong, who grew up eating balut at his Vietnamese family’s backyard barbecues, to function as my Sherpa.
If you’ve been to Abacá and don’t remember seeing balut, that’s because it’s on the restaurant’s secret menu. The four-item selection, accessible via QR code and available only during dinner, also includes oysters with pungent fish sauce and a skewer of barbecued intestine. Chef and owner Francis Ang wanted to serve balut in part because it’s such an important part of Filipino cuisine. “And I’m a little greedy,” he said. “I just want to eat it.”
Ang’s secret menu offers two versions: OG Balut and Balut Three Ways, both $12. The latter is intended as a gateway for diners for whom eating a duck embryo might be a bridge too far. This is not to say Balut Three Ways isn’t an adventure of its own.
The elevated version of the street food starts with two approachable components: an eggshell filled with a rich duck broth and a shard of chicharrones-like fried chicken skin, topped with a smooth yolk mousse. But the third element gave me plenty of pause — because it was a tiny, whole duckling, beer-battered and deep-fried, with a minuscule Mohawk of cilantro atop its delicate head, staring blankly at me. “It’s a sort of balut-ified version of fried chicken,” Ang said. Indeed, it tasted pretty much exactly like chicken, though with a slightly softer texture inside.
Finally, we came to the OG Balut. With Truong’s words of wisdom ringing in my ears — “Don’t forget to add vinegar and salt!” — I selected my duck egg. The warm orb was surprisingly hefty, and I cautiously tapped the wide end with the back of my spoon until the shell gave way.
Inside the 17-day incubated egg sourced from Metzer Farms, I discovered, with a sigh of relief, something barely recognizable as a would-be duck. In fact, with a pinch of salt and a dribble of Abacá’s house-made pear vinegar, it tasted not unlike a run-of-the-mill hard-boiled egg: mild in flavor, with the familiar crumbly, dry texture of hard-boiled yolk. By the second bite, this time amped up with a spoonful of chili oil, I’d left behind any qualms.
Abacá