The Incredible Edible Egg

One of my best friends from college always told me that there is but one principle to live one's life by:

"If one is good, then two MUST be better."

In regard to food, many chefs have tried to uncover all-encompassing augmentation which will improve almost any dish. Unfortunately for them, I have never come across a sushi roll which benefits from being deep fried in tempura batter, a dip in a chocolate waterfall cannot mask the texture of less-than-fresh fruit or dry pound cake, and a heavy shower of creole seasoning or Tabasco only overpowers a flavorless pieces of meat.

But if you add a fried egg to just about anything, you have increased the odds of me ordering that dish by about 50%.  And I must not be the only one easily persuaded by the temptation of a rich, flowing yolk because lately chefs have been supplementing all kinds of dishes with a fried egg. Perhaps it's the inner stoner in all of us that craves some combination of breakfast with just about any other food, but no matter whether I am completely sauced or stone cold sober, the phrase "add a fried egg" is as strong a call for me as the song of the sirens.

Below are four of my favorite dishes in the city which feature an addition of a gratuitous egg*:

• Bayou Banh Mi Special (Geaux Plates) - Owners Henry Pulitzer and Andrew Gomila take their version of the Vietnamese po-boy to another level by adding a fried egg to the combination of lemongrass grilled chicken and boudin.
• Tutto Carne Pizza (Domenica) - The staff favorite features four house cured meats - fennel sausage, bacon, salami, and cotechino - plus a fresh egg cracked in the center of the pie.
• Breakfast Burger - I remember when the waiter used to have to check with the kitchen before he let you order your burger topped with a fried egg, but now everyone's doing it. Capdeville, The Company Burger, Cowbell, and Tru Burger all feature a fried egg as an optional add-on to your burger.
• Pork Lovers Rice Plate (Tan Dinh) - How do you improve on a plate full of chargrilled pork, pork pate meatballs, pork chop, and shredded pork? Top the whole shebang with a couple of fried eggs, of course.

Did I miss out on any eggscellent dishes?  Let's hear about them in the comments.

*There, of course, other dishes in which the egg yolk plays an integral (if not) essential role.  The spaghetti with guanciale and deep fried poached egg at Herbsaint and Green, Eggs, & Ham at Vizard's are two which immediately come to mind. But here I am focusing on those dishes which are great on their own but taste even better with a gilding of the golden lilly.

Geaux Plates

It's 11:30pm on a Friday. This supposed after-work drink (singular) has morphed into a much longer session than expected, and The Pope keeps talking about the Gold Mine. You haven't eaten since lunch, and your stomach is screaming for pork products stuffed inside a Vietnamese baguette. Where do you turn...

A few weeks ago the local food truck scene expanded by one with the premiere of Geaux Plates, the purple and gold truck making new waves with Uptown bar hoppers. Proprietors Henry Pulitzer and Andrew Gomila have transformed the former Taqueria Chilangos taco truck into a mobile purveyor of local favorites ranging from jambalaya to their own version of a banh mi.

The short menu consists of 6 items, all prices at $7 or under. My favorite is the Bayon Banh Mi (pictured above) which pairs lemongrass grilled chicken and boudin with all of the typical dressings of the classic Vietnamese sandwich. It's like lovin' on Dong Phuong bread, with bonus points to the kitchen for using chicken thighs, which are much more flavorful than breasts. The Cochon de Lait PoBoy has succulent shreds of root beer braised pork plus crunchy mirliton and red onion slaw and pickled chiles for heat. And though the Fancy Ass Grilled Cheese was probably created with the most inebriated of patrons in mind, even the stone-cold sober can appreciate the molten mixture of melted gruyere, red onion marmalade, and grilled portabellos between buttery sliced bread.

Fork-worthy dishes are jambalaya and the Breaux Bridge Breakfast (boudin cake topped with a fried egg), but for some reason using utensils to eat while standing outside a bar never really worked for me. Instead, I recommend requesting a fried egg ON TOP of the Bayou Banh Mi or Cochon de Lait, because nothing takes a sandwich to whole other level like the addition of the gratuitous fried egg and it's rich flowing yolk.

Geaux Plates usually operates Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, moving back and forth between Rendezvous and the Bridge Lounge. You can track them down via Twitter, or just follow my trail of banh mi crumbs.

Geaux Plates - Birdie