The Last Egg

Welcome to Best Food Blog, a writer-run publication about eating by journalists Ali Francis, Anikah Shaokat, Anna Hezel, and Antara Sinha. You can check out everything we’ve published so far here. Today, we’re sharing a look at what’s getting us excited to cook right now.

Whenever any of my friends ask what they should have for dinner (or breakfast, or lunch) in the groupchat, our half-serious, half-earnest response has always been “e g g” — the kind of stupid text that was maybe an inside joke years ago, has been stripped of origin, but still makes us laugh. There’s something to be said about how reliably easy, almost in a poetic way, it’s been to build a whole meal around an egg.

In the wake of bird flu, skyrocketing prices, and millions of birds culled, I’ve been feeling all sorts of malaise around egg consumption. Instead of simple, wholesome, reliable, and the meal-building default, it’s a little more fraught. As Khushbu Shah posits in her newsletter, Tap Is Fine, “Maybe eggs should have been a luxury food all along.”