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Perhaps it was wrong to start dinner by biting off the head of the chick. But that looked easier than trying to angle and fit the bent legs and the chick’s ass into my mouth. Its size is deceptive. You’d think you can pop a fist-size piece in one go, but the appendages make it impossible.
I’m talking about a lesser-known street food, deep-fried and orange, that I had for dinner yesterday: The day-old chick.
I am not a squeamish person and since I started eating meat again several years ago, I’d eat whatever was served. I included that vegetarian bit about myself to give you an idea of the range of strange, gross-sounding things that I’ve already tried, like fake meat.
So I couldn’t understand myself when my stomach turned upon seeing this day-old chick being sold on the third floor of V-Mall in Greenhills.
The beak is already formed, as the rest of its appendages. Its butt crack reveals a yellowish green end to its digestive track. An order (PHP25) will get you three pieces of this, orange-colored, um, delicacy.
Apparently, it’s not a new thing. It’s been available since V-Mall was still Virra Mall. The lady at the counter tells me that some of her customers would tell her it’s from Nueva Ecija.
Ate girl tells me that on weekends, they can sell up to four plastic bags of the day-old chicks. “Sa regular na araw, tulad nito, mga dalawa lang,” she says as she’s closing on Wed night. She says her boss delivers the chicks, ready for frying, every day.
The day-old chick is one of four offerings of the food cart: there’s the famous balut aka duck embryo (starts PHP15), tokneneng, which is penoy (PHP14), kwek-kwek, or quail’s egg (PHP22) and… the day-old chick (PHP25).
There are two condiments to choose from: sweet chilli vinegar or regular vinegar. Ate girl recommended sweet chilli. You take three toothpicks with which you’ll pick the chick and put in your mouth, like finger food.
The legs are deliciously crispy, that much I can and will say. They remind me of of those delicious baby crabs or baby shrimps from the Aklan province: crispy, oily and yummy.
It was with the ass and the head I had problems with. No amount of vinegar I doused it with could drown the chewiness of both body parts.
Its brains were rubbery, almost leathery with a side of crunch courtesy of the beak. It was interesting, yes, but not enjoyable.
I bit into its ribs, terribly weirded out with the experience — what the hell was I eating? Finally, I bit into the ass, which had the most character in terms of flavor and texture.
Like the head, the ass was also chewy. It had a weird, bitter taste that could not be drowned out by the spicy vinegar. It actually reminded me of a meatier isaw, which is pretty gross if you realize what isaw is: intestines where the last round of digestion, before food turns into full-on shit, takes place.
Crunchy, chewy, deep-fried, bitter. It made me want to drink beer, which was thankfully available in V-Mall’s food court. Except at 7:45pm, everything is closing and nobody would sell me anything anymore.
I called on a janitor mopping the floor nearby, eager to share my dinner with him. “Have you tried this” I ask him in Filipino. “Opo, masarap yan,” he says enthusiastically. “Mahirap lang minsan kasi mapait,” he stops. “Ano ba tawag duon? Well done?”
I left V-Mall confounded. Should I go back to vegetarianism? I started thinking of the weirdest and/or grossest things I’ve ever eaten, and nothing comes close to this day-old chick. Not fermented shark, not whale, not fake meat, not even balut.
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