Eating Viet Nam: Dispatches from a Blue Plastic Table

by Graham Holliday

She picked up her basket, pulled up a seat next to us, and asked, “Would you like some trứng vịt lộn?” She opened the basket to reveal a set of eggcups, teaspoons, some herbs, and a dozen or more large white duck eggs. Specifically, duck fetus eggs. Trứng vịt lộn is one of the more feared dishes in Việt Nam, because, well, it’s disgusting—unless consuming the crunchy bones of a visibly half-grown fetus appeals to you. While it does, in fact, appeal to many, many Vietnamese, this dish turns the stomach of most visitors like a tumble dryer on turbo-spin mode. Like the Philippine dish balut, a rising foodie-hipster favorite, it’s a shell with a bit of egg, a bit of half-grown duck, some feathers, a beak, and veins. It’s a gross-out on a par with tiết canh, raw duck’s blood in a bowl with chopped peanuts, which I’d had once. It had been like eating a nosebleed. A huge one.