Rise And Shine

Are pastured eggs the perfect food? Tamar Adler reports on the thrilling ascent of a once-humble (and, yes, healthy) ingredient.

- Tamar Adler

“OMNE VIVUM EX OVO,” I notify my dining companion, scooping the last of a glorious plate of scrambled eggs from under her nose. It’s a grand pronouncement (“Every living thing comes from an egg”), but I’m in the mood for one. I love eggs, and we are living in an age of ovodolatry, of oeufphilia. It’s the Eggolith! These symbols of creation have, of course, been sacred for centuries. The Greeks had their Orphic egg, the Vedas their Cosmic egg. Enlightenment-era philosopher Denis Diderot famously pronounced that all the world’s theologies could be toppled by an egg! But here in America, for a tragic half century, eggs have been culinarily pedestrian—scrambled or fried at breakfast to the consistency of cardboard, tasteless yolks blending with bland whites. At last, something new is afoot.

It is not only that eggophiles stand in line for hours at Eggslut in L.A. And that New York’s Egg Shop does a brisk business in mezcal cocktails and dishes like the Warrior One—a poached egg, masala-spiced lentils, shaved broccoli. Or that the Japanese okonomiyaki—a cabbage omelet that can cure a hangover and most variations of malaise—has become ubiquitous. Or that Put an Egg on It is both a zine and a meme. It is that eggs are finally being coddled and cosseted, napped with fresh cream, crowned with caviar, festooned with the freshest offerings from the sea—all in ambitious testament to their culinary and cultural inviolability.