I found the embryo part to be unpleasantly gristly.
Now I have to go find a place that has good fermented sushi
I once got a chicken foot in a bowl of soup in Guatemala.
Copilot says balut has a slightly gamey taste. The closest thing to “gamey” that I’ve ever had was wild hare, shot by a Scottish pen-pal’s father on the estate he managed and then left to hang outdoors for several days. It was okay when doused with Worcestershire sauce and stewed, but I still remember that strong flavor of air-aged meat.
White guy?
I have roots (and family) in Mie, but I didn’t know that narezushi was a regional thing there. I have never had it, not even when we visited the home village. I guess the cousins thought it was more impressive to serve us watermelon (it was, and I think still is tremendously expensive compared to the US) than anything else.
I’ve never understood what that is supposed to mean. I’m a hunter and I eat a lot of wild game, but I wouldn’t describe any of it as “gamey”. A lot of people also describe unusual foods as tasting “like chicken.” I would describe balut as tasting like chicken and an egg yolk.
He was white, yes. I met him in Moscow, but I believe he was also a long-time resident of Thailand.
I was served domestically-raised rabbit for Christmas in Czechoslovakia. It did indeed have a mild flavor very much like chicken. But the wild hare that I had in Scotland had a much stronger, earthy taste.
I agree; the taste was very much like boiled poultry and boiled egg. It was the gristly texture I found off-putting.
The sensory experience that is balut can vary a lot depending on how developed the embryo is at the time it gets cooked. Very young embryos are much like rubbery boiled eggs. Those embryos that are closer to hatching are a little more of a challenge, texture-wise!
I’ve had balut, and would eat it again as long as somebody else is buying. Not worth my money, IMO.
Ah, here is my trick- cut them off, and fry them a bit before putting the steak in.
You would think a guy named @Chefguy would know every culinary trick in the book, as well as having invented a couple of his own.
Good point. But others reading this might not have the same expertise.
Just joshin’ you, my man.
Good one. 
I would say about 40% of the egg I ate was duck “meat”.
My first sight of that was 40 years ago. We were with a friend in Seattle, and had gone to a dim sum restaurant - the kind where they wheel around carts and you point to what you want.
They hadn’t come around in a few minutes and we were hungry, so we pointed to the first thing we saw, having no idea what it was.
The waiter put it on the table and we stared at it. My friend finaly said “I… think I know what this is. I think it’s chicken feet…”.
We all tried it, but really didn’t see the point, I think it was coated in some batter and fried then coated in sauce, so I guess you are supposed to nibble the batter off the foot? No meat of any kind on it of course. And the texture was vile.
A decade or so ago I was talking about this with some colleagues and we were going to a dim sum restaurant near our office. It was a weekday so you had to order what you want. We got a dish of chicken feet just so they could say they’d tried it.
It was no more edible than 20 years earlier.
Chicken feet may be great to add when making soup stock (to add collagen), but I just don’t see the point of attempting to “eat” them.
In Soviet Russia, food tastes YOU!
My wife’s company had a Chinese New Year banquet with multiple courses. One of the courses was chunks of fried chicken. One of the (non-Chinese) people at our table grabbed a piece from the communal dish and I asked her “Are you sure you want the head?” Upon further examination, she noticed the beak and eye sockets beneath the batter and she decided to put it back.