We've all heard of competitive eaters downing hot dogs, pasta and even buffalo wings. But a recent eating contest held in Brooklyn had to be a first.
Over the weekend the Filipino restaurant Maharlika invited hungry people across the Big Apple to see how many baluts they could eat in five minutes. Never heard of a balut? It's a fertilized duck embryo which is about two weeks from hatching. Many times the boiled egg contains all or part of a duckling.
"Once you crack it open, there is basically a soup in it and you crack it open, you drink that soup and then you eat the yolk and inside you see a baby duckling," said Maharlika executive chef Miguel Trinidad. "Sometimes you might get lucky and you might find one that has a few feathers, a little bit of a beak on it, but you do see a little embryo and that's the part that you eat along with the yolk and the soup. And it's a great source of protein. It's considered an aphrodisiac. It's supposed to give people power."
The eggs did appear to give Wayne Aleginio power. The 27-year-old won the competition after downing 18 eggs in five minutes, which amounts to averaging more than one egg every 20 seconds. And get this: Aleginio said he was still hungry after dominating the contest.
"This contest was my first experience with ‘balut’ and I didn’t really get the full taste of it because I was just shoving it into my mouth and eating it as fast as possible," Aleginio said. "I did not have a tummy ache afterwards; actually I was still hungry."
For more photos from the event, see here.
(H/T to The Huffington Post)
