Ahh, eggs. You may love them or hate them, but even if you are part of the latter, you can’t deny their versatility. A couple of weeks ago, my friends ate brunch at Frary and, amid a conversation about Spiderman (brunch conversations are the best conversations), we quickly noticed that though the contents of our greenboxes varied, we all had eggs prepared in some way. One friend and I had scrambled eggs, one went for a classic Frary omelet and another had a hard-boiled egg nestled snugly between two hash browns.
Our conversation swiftly changed to something that was far more pressing at that moment: What was the best way to eat eggs? Or rather, because we didn’t want to have a full-fledged debate on that peaceful Sunday morning, what was everyone’s favorite way to eat eggs?
As expected, the answers varied significantly. There was a discussion about Japanese tea eggs, a passionate soliloquy of appreciation for fluffy scrambled eggs and even an homage to the often overlooked hard-boiled egg.
We went around the table, and when it was my turn, I talked about my love for gyeranjim, a fluffy Korean egg soufflé prepared in a piping hot stone pot. When paired with rice and some kimchi, gyeranjjim is the ultimate comfort meal. My friends nodded in encouragement, and we continued circling the table multiple times, adding more and more egg delicacies to our ever-growing list.
Though the conversation could have gone on for hours, we eventually put it to a close. We gathered our stuff and scattered, but for the rest of the day, I was still thinking about eggs. I stared at my code for my introduction to computer science class — my mind was on nothing but egg soufflé. “Right now, gyeranjjim is my go-to egg dish,” I thought. “But it was not always like that.” Indeed, my egg preferences have changed throughout different seasons of my life.
I thought about how my mom would frequently pack me hard-boiled eggs with my lunch when I was in elementary school. Initially, I was not the biggest fan, but once she came back from the Japanese dollar store with animal-shaped egg molds, which changed the game entirely. Suddenly hard-boiled eggs were my favorite part of my lunch, and I would always rush to the lunch tables with eager anticipation of which egg animal would be staring back at me when I opened my bag.
Then, my mind turned to when I tried a soft-boiled egg for the first time (I didn’t even know they existed) at a family friend’s restaurant. It was such a satisfying topping for my avocado toast that, following that meal, my dad and I tried to perfect our own soft-boiled eggs at home. I chuckled to myself as I recounted mornings in high school when my dad would dart his eyes between the boiling eggs and the timer on his phone, sprinting to the sink when the timer beeped to submerge them in the ice water at precisely seven minutes.
Next, I started thinking about how simple fried eggs over rice (drizzled with sesame oil and soy sauce) satisfied me when I lived alone in Seoul during my gap year. Finally, my mind returned to the present day — and how, though I sadly cannot get gyeranjjim at Frank or Frary, it is a must-eat whenever I do venture out of the Claremont bubble.
The amusing conversation over brunch with my friends led me to realize that eggs don’t get nearly enough credit. There are so many ways to prepare them and so many ways that they can satisfy you.
So, the next time you go into the dining hall, I encourage you to survey your egg options. As you do, ask yourself the same question that my friends and I asked ourselves at brunch: What is the best way to eat an egg (for me, right now)? If you have an answer, I hope that, at the dining hall or elsewhere, you can indulge yourself and enjoy it soon. Maybe you don’t have an answer. In that case, with time, I do not doubt that you will find one.
Emily Kim PO ’25 is from Irvine, California. She loves baggy sweaters, YouTube karaoke and banana bread.