The Osaka taste sensation that no one in Osaka has ever heard of: Coffee & Raw Egg 【Taste Test】

Japan’s Fuji TV recently branded the majority of Osakans as people who love putting raw egg into coffee. Not wanting to be left out, we gave it a try.

The revelation was tweeted by Makoto Sakurai, founder of the ultra-nationalist Zainichi Tokken wo Yurusanai Shimin group who—to put it mildly—hold a negative view of rights being given to certain foreign nationals living in Japan, particularly Korean ones.

フジテレビがまた懲りもせずに韓国押しを始めました。大阪でコーヒーに生卵を入れるのが流行っているとか。調べてみたら下朝鮮の風習だとか。生野区の朝鮮部落でインタビューした結果をそのまま「大阪」全体に当てはめるフジテレビにはまだまだお仕置きが足りないようです。嫌だから見ませんフジテレビ
—
桜井誠 (@Doronpa01) December 22, 2015

Leaving the politics out of his message, Sakurai mentioned that Fuji TV had interviewed someone in the Koreatown section of Ikuno Ward in Osaka who said that they enjoy putting raw egg into their coffee. However, somewhere along the way Fuji TV may have implied that it was something of a fad in all of Osaka.

Many replied in the expected shock and horror at such news.

“Ugeeeoeeee!!!!”
“I’ve lived in Osaka for 30 years and have never had that.”
“This is the first I’ve heard of this craze.”
“Ugh, that’s like something your buddies would dare you to drink.”
“I don’t know. It might have a milk-like taste to it.”
“Bacon coffee seems like a good idea, but I don’t know about this.”

Having lived in Osaka for many years, and just a few blocks from Koreatown, I have never once heard of putting egg in coffee. Granted I’m not the most connected guy in the world but I’m pretty sure very few people outside the one who was interviewed actually do it.

Pretty sure…but not 100-percent, so in an effort to stay on the cutting edge of culinary trends I set out to make some coffee with raw egg.

It wasn’t the most challenging of recipes, requiring only a raw egg and cup of coffee. I opted for McDonald’s coffee since it’s notorious for being atomically hot and seemed to have the best chance of mixing with the egg. I also went for a small size to achieve a high egg-to-coffee ratio.

I also got a strawberry donut with sprinkles, because I deserve it.

The small coffee lacked the mass to float the egg, leaving it a mysterious slimy sensation at the bottom of the cup as I poked around with the stirrer.

Not really knowing how to make raw egg and coffee, I figured I ought to stir it up. It took a considerable amount of stirring, well over a minute, before the coffee began to lighten up.

By this time a thick wad of egg had amassed around the stir stick. Things were not looking good.

However, after taking the first sip, I was surprised at how normal it tasted. The bitterness of the coffee was somewhat subdued but it basically tasted like a regular coffee with just a few drops of cream.

The texture was a little thicker but it was hardly noticeable. Even dunking the donut yielded the same results as a regular coffee.

Left utterly underwhelmed, I decided to add some sugar and cream in the hopes I could get a cake going, but nothing much changed. However, as I got near the bottom things began to get funky.

Until this point I had been surprised at how well the egg blended into the small coffee, but as it turned out there were some remnants swirling around the bottom of the cup. The trooper that I am, I swigged through this portion in the hopes of finding some redeeming value to this beverage.

If you’d like to recreate this experience, just find a friend or coworker with a phlegmy head cold and ask them to spit in your coffee. Then you’ll have it to a T.

In conclusion raw-egg and coffee is at best not significantly different from regular coffee, and at worst like a cup of warm spit. I find it hard to believe that anyone would want to have this and am suspecting someone was pulling that Fuji TV producer’s leg.

A better alternative would be the egg coffee that’s found in several pockets around the world like in Vietnam and Sweden. It’s a little more complex and involves mixing the egg with coffee grounds and then filtering out a creamy drink that looks great to have on a cold winter day.