Category: News

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were sworn in as the 46th President and Vice President of the United States on Wednesday afternoon in an inauguration ceremony that was unlike any other we’ve seen due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and threats of violence from right-wing groups. Things happily went off without a hitch on Wednesday in D.C. and one of the main people that stole the show was Nikolas Ajagu, the husband of Kamala Harris’ niece, Meena, who went viral when sneakerheads on Twitter noticed someone going down the steps behind the podium in a pair of the Dior Jordan 1 highs.

Meena Harris confirmed he was indeed rocking the Diors, a bit to her dismay, and couldn’t believe her husband’s sneakers were trending on the day of her aunt’s inauguration as vice president.

Ajagu wasn’t the only one stepping out in Jordans for the inauguration, as Biden’s granddaughter, Maisy, was out there in a pair of the “Sisterhood” Jordan 1 mids.

It was a great day for all of us in the “nice sneakers are dress shoes” crowd, who can now point to Ajagu and Maisy as pillars of excellence in wearing Jordans to as formal an event as there is, the presidential inauguration. If they can make that happen, you too can wear your finest sneakers to the next wedding or formal event, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

If you live in an apartment complex or a college dorm, you might be wondering why it sounds like your neighbors are all screaming pirate songs at the top of their lungs during random hours. First of all, they’re called sea shanties not “pirate songs” — get it straight. Second, get ready to sing along. Because, as you’ve probably figured out by now, these joints are catchy.

Like most music trends these days, we have TikTok to blame for this one. Sea shanties are all the rage on TikTok right now, so much so that a sub-community at TikTok has been created around the phenomenon, known as ShantyTok. But why are sea shanties resonating with people so strongly at this particular moment?

Whose Fault Is This?

If you’re looking for someone to blame — or thank, depending on where you fall — then look no further than TikTok user Nathan Evans.

Hailing from Scotland, the aspiring musician and now TikTok star kicked off the trend just before Christmas after he uploaded an acapella rendition of “The Scotsman.” Accompanied solely by a steady rhythm provided by his pounding fist, Evans’ cover quickly amassed millions of views. Evans quickly followed up the surprise success with another acapella shanty performance, this time with the old New Zealand whaling tune, “Soon May The Wellerman Come” — the epicenter of ShantyTok.

Our Favorite ShantyToks

Currently, Evan’s performance of “The Wellerman” has been viewed more than seven million times, but that’s not what’s so cool about it. What’s far more impressive is the bizarre community that has formed around the video, which is being shared, remixed, chopped, screwed, and reinterpreted by thousands of TikTok users. Music producers are adding beats and synth leads, vocalists are adding their own touches, creating a choir of harmonies around Evans’ original performance, and musicians are adding their own talents into the mix.

In fact, the whole thing has developed much like in the olden days, when a bunch of bored sailors laboring on a ship would layer sounds however they could, over the course of days, weeks, or months. TikTok has popularized some seriously weird trends, but none have felt quite as communal as the world of ShantyTok.

Here are some of our favorites.

And it doesn’t stop there, the world of ShantyTok is deep. Some users have introduced new shanties to the repertoire, so don’t be too surprised when Drake finally drops that shanty single.

I Still Don’t Get It

At first, ShantyTok might strike you — like everything on TikTok — as cringey as hell. But after a certain level of exposure, the songs become ridiculously infectious. Speaking personally, I’ve spent far too much time today talking like an old sea captain and saying shit like “yarr” out loud. In real life. So what is it about sea shanties that seem to be resonating so strongly with people?

It’s really quite simple actually. According to the New York Times, who wrote a deep dive on the trend (which should tell you just how popular it’s becoming), sea shanties were originally sung by overworked sailors to create a sense of community and shared purpose on merchant marine vessels between the 1700s and 1800s. The shantyman would lead sailors in song as they worked as a way to distract them from the hardships (and boredom) of the seas.

“If it wasn’t for TikTok, I would be so bored and claustrophobic… But it can give you a sense of having a group. You can collaborate with other people and make friends easily,” Evans told the New York Times. We feel that.

Sounds a lot like quarantine, right? Aren’t we all like a captive crew, days blurring together as we toil away, looking for any way to pass the time? Sea shanties are providing millions of TikTok users with a sense of community they haven’t felt in some time, keeping us from slipping away into Willem Dafoe-in-The Lighthouse-levels of insanity.

Among many notable moments in Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration, Amanda Gorman’s recitation of her original poem “The Hill We Climb” stood out as a punctuation mark on the day.

It’s perhaps fitting that Gorman herself stands out in several ways. The 22-year-old former National Youth Poet Laureate is the youngest poet to compose and deliver an inaugural poem. Like Joe Biden, she struggled with a speech impediment as a child, which makes reciting her poetry in an event broadcast around the globe all the more impressive. But what’s most striking in this moment is what she represents—the bright and hopeful future of America.

For four years, we’ve had an administration focused on reversing progress and taking the country backwards to a mythical era in which the country was better. The slogan “Make America Great Again” has always implied a yearning to return to some kind of ideal past—one which, in reality, didn’t exist (unless you’re actually into white supremacy). The U.S. was built on high ideals but has always grappled with the advancement of some at the expense of others, with the legacy of racism and sexism ever-present in our politics, and with injustice being inseparable from our imbalance of political power.

Today, though, we marked a distinct shift in that balance of power. We swore in our first female vice president, in addition to our first non-white vice president. And in adding the voice of a young, Black, female poet to artfully contextualize the occasion, we see an emphasis in leaning into that shift. In Amanda Gorman, we see an America looking to the future as we honestly assess our past.

Biden’s team contacted Gorman last month to ask her to share a poem about unity, and that’s exactly what she delivered. But the unity she envisions in her poem doesn’t look like ignoring or forgetting the painful experiences of the past.

“In my poem, I’m not going to in any way gloss over what we’ve seen over the past few weeks and, dare I say, the past few years,” Gorman told The New York Times prior to the inauguration. “But what I really aspire to do in the poem is to be able to use my words to envision a way in which our country can still come together and can still heal. It’s doing that in a way that is not erasing or neglecting the harsh truths I think America needs to reconcile with.”

In her sunny yellow coat on a sunny day at the Capitol—where violent rioters assaulted the very foundation of democracy just two weeks ago—Amanda Gorman offers words of hope and healing rooted in reality, all of which the nation desperately yearns for in this moment.

Watch her nail it:

Here are the words of “The Hill We Climb”:

“When day comes we ask ourselves,
where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry,
a sea we must wade
We’ve braved the belly of the beast
We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace
And the norms and notions
of what just is
Isn’t always just-ice
And yet the dawn is ours
before we knew it
Somehow we do it
Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed
a nation that isn’t broken
but simply unfinished
We the successors of a country and a time
Where a skinny Black girl
descended from slaves and raised by a single mother
can dream of becoming president
only to find herself reciting for one
And yes we are far from polished
far from pristine
but that doesn’t mean we are
striving to form a union that is perfect
We are striving to forge a union with purpose
To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and
conditions of man
And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us
but what stands before us
We close the divide because we know, to put our future first,
we must first put our differences aside
We lay down our arms
so we can reach out our arms
to one another
We seek harm to none and harmony for all
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:
That even as we grieved, we grew
That even as we hurt, we hoped
That even as we tired, we tried
That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious
Not because we will never again know defeat
but because we will never again sow division
Scripture tells us to envision
that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree
And no one shall make them afraid
If we’re to live up to our own time
Then victory won’t lie in the blade
But in all the bridges we’ve made
That is the promise to glade
The hill we climb
If only we dare
It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit,
it’s the past we step into
and how we repair it
We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation
rather than share it
Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy
And this effort very nearly succeeded
But while democracy can be periodically delayed
it can never be permanently defeated
In this truth
in this faith we trust
For while we have our eyes on the future
history has its eyes on us
This is the era of just redemption
We feared at its inception
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs
of such a terrifying hour
but within it we found the power
to author a new chapter
To offer hope and laughter to ourselves
So while once we asked,
how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?
Now we assert
How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?
We will not march back to what was
but move to what shall be
A country that is bruised but whole,
benevolent but bold,
fierce and free
We will not be turned around
or interrupted by intimidation
because we know our inaction and inertia
will be the inheritance of the next generation
Our blunders become their burdens
But one thing is certain:
If we merge mercy with might,
and might with right,
then love becomes our legacy
and change our children’s birthright
So let us leave behind a country
better than the one we were left with
Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest,
we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one
We will rise from the gold-limbed hills of the west,
we will rise from the windswept northeast
where our forefathers first realized revolution
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states,
we will rise from the sunbaked south
We will rebuild, reconcile and recover
and every known nook of our nation and
every corner called our country,
our people diverse and beautiful will emerge,
battered and beautiful
When day comes we step out of the shade,
aflame and unafraid
The new dawn blooms as we free it
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it
If only we’re brave enough to be it”

Thank you for your beautiful, meaningful words, Ms. Gorman, and for offering us a glimpse of a truly greater America we all have a role in creating.

Much of the music world was thrilled about the inauguration today. That’s especially true of Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez, and Garth Brooks, who all had the opportunity to perform during the ceremony. Lil Nas X was happy about the day as well, but for a different reason, as he revealed in a hilarious sketch video he shared.

The 33-second cinematic marvel begins with Nas standing in a crowd of inauguration onlookers, and by “standing in a crowd,” I mean swapping out the background of the video he shot at home. The text on the screen reads, “Me stealing stimmys for the homies while everyone is distracted at the inauguration.” As Biden’s speech goes on in the background, Nas proceeds to work his way through the White House as his own song “Holiday” plays. He eventually finds the “stemulus room,” goes past lasers and other security measures, and starts piling cash into a backpack. Mitch McConnell tries to stop Nas but backs down after Nas points a (drawing of a) gun at him.

Meanwhile, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, he also took the opportunity to re-share a hilarious old tweet of his, which reads: “when i was young i went to a civil rights march and martin luther king pointed to me and smiled. he said make music and never stop, well look at me now.”

Leslie Knope‘s love for Joe Biden is damn near legendary. The Parks and Recreation character famously brought to life by Amy Poehler harbored a frequently-cited crush for the then-vice president during the show’s seven season run on NBC. In an amazing casting coup for the sitcom, Biden actually appeared on the show in the 2012 episode “Leslie vs. April,” and Leslie’s interaction with her deepest obsession launched a thousand GIFs as she struggled to compose herself before eventually being removed by the Secret Service while screaming “He is precious cargo!”

And it’s that classic scene that came roaring back to life on social media during Biden’s inauguration as Parks and Rec fans made “Leslie Knope” trend by claiming that she knew this day would come.

Of course, it didn’t take long for the “Leslie Knope knew” reactions to evolve into enjoying the thought of how Biden’s inauguration would feel for Leslie. Heck, after the past four years, who wouldn’t enjoy a day where Leslie Knope is trending instead of things like insurrection or #RIGGED?

After looking at these reactions, it really drives home how synonymous Poehler is with Leslie Knope who almost missed out on the iconic role. Back in December, Parks and Rec creator Mike Schur revealed how NBC wanted to debut the show after the 2009 Super Bowl, but there was a major problem. Poehler was pregnant with her first child and was due to give birth right as the show needed to start filming its pilot. Schur said they could’ve recast, but he told Literally! With Robe Lowe that he made the “insane” decision of asking NBC to shorten the first season order and wait three months. “We just kept feeling that debuting after the Super Bowl is a short-term fix,” Schur said. “Getting Amy Poehler on the show is the long-term solution.”

Regardless of where you live, you’re going to need something (usually in beer or whiskey form) to help you warm up on those bone-chilling winter days. What constitutes “bone-chilling” depends on where you reside, of course. If you’re located in San Diego, a day with a high of 50 might be enough for you to bundle up from head to toe. A denizen of Buffalo might feel the same way when thick, blinding snow is cascading down and the temperature dips below 10.

Either way, both of these cold-weather stalwarts require a warming beverage at the end of the day. And since we write about whiskey almost every damn day, we’re focusing on beer this time around.

“The best winter warmer be for me is a Schwarzbier,” says Tyra Demarest, bartender at V Lounge in Solvang, California. “It’s dark as a stout like a Guinness, but the difference would be that it’s not necessarily brewed like a stout — so there’s not much thickness to it. It’s brewed like an ale with dark, rich hints of chocolate. You might get some vanilla in there and in the very, very distant back of your palate you’ll get currants as well.”

If that doesn’t sound like your vibe, we asked 16 more bartenders for their picks, too. Check the beers they shouted out below.

Belching Beaver Peanut Butter Stout

Jerry Skakun, bartender at Cucina Enoteca in Newport Beach, California

If we are talking warm beers, anything Irish or German would be awesome, if we are talking a beer to opt for that warming sensation, I would say Belching Beaver Peanut Butter Stout. Throw some vanilla ice cream and dulce de leche in the pint glass — it’s the ultimate game-changer.

Spaten Optimator

Christopher Wright, bartender at Don Camillo Tuscan Cuisine in Corinth, Texas

While not labeled a winter warmer, in particular, my favorite beer to enjoy during the colder months is the Spaten Optimator doppelbock. Do keep in mind that this delicious beverage carries a 7.6 % ABV, so it is best enjoyed where and when no travel is required.

The Spaten Optimator carries all the malty and spicy traits which you would expect from a winter warmer, making this my personal recommendation for the category.

Westbrook Mexican Cake

Allen Lancaster, master cocktail craftsman at The Bar at The Spectator Hotel in Charleston, South Carolina

Westbrook Brewing Mexican Cake is a must-have for me. Cocoa, cinnamon, vanilla, and habanero pepper make it the perfect choice for a winter warmer that hugs you from the inside.

Hitachino Nest Weizen

Ilan Chartor, head bartender at MILA in Miami

I like Hitachino Nest Weizen. It’s a German-style Hefeweizen inspired Japanese Beer. It has notes of orange, vanilla, banana, and clove, making it a great winter beer.

Bristol Winter Warlock

Anastacio Garcia Liley, USBG bartender in Colorado Springs, Colorado

I love Winter Warlock from Bristol Brewery. It’s a drier, toasty flavor profile that makes you wish you were out camping with a nice cold bottle by the fire.

Wicked Weed Milk & Cookies

Kirstin Sabik, mixologist at Sneaky Tiki in Pensacola, Florida

Wicked Weed Milk & Cookies feels like coming home for the holidays. Sitting around the kitchen with family and friends protected from the winter chill, this one warms the heart and soul. What flavors make it great? Sweet vanilla, oatmeal, and cinnamon and raisin cookies, just like grandma used to make.

Fat Bottom Knockout IPA

Kimberly Basnight, lead bartender at Fins Bar in Nashville

One of my favorite winter warmer beer would be Fat Bottom Knockout IPA because of its unique flavors, hops to keep you warm, and a hint of grapefruit.

Samuel Adams Winter Lager

Una Green, USBG bartender in Los Angeles

I’m originally from Boston and have been living in LA now for almost twelve years. Around the holidays, and especially 2020 and not being able to travel, I get very nostalgic and sentimental. So I usually reach for a six-pack of the Sam Adams seasonal beers, like the brand’s Winter Lager.

Delirium Noel

Sire Negri, lead mixologist at Havana Beach Bar & Grill, located at The Pearl Hotel in Rosemary Beach, Florida

‘Tis the season for Brouwerij Huyghe Delirium Noel. This seasonal release from Brouwerij Huyghe only comes out once a year. This Belgian Strong Ale has strong notes of banana bread, caramel, and seasonal spice. Clocking in at a hefty 10% ABV, Delirium Noel is a wonderful treat.

Ommegang Three Philosophers

Stephen Lasaten, food and beverage manager at The Ritz-Carlton St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands

Ommegang Three Philosophers. With its high alcohol content, fruity and chocolaty aromas will give you the feeling of relaxing next to a campfire.

Enjoy this in moderation and it’ll make for a smooth and warm night.

21st Amendment Fireside Chat

Raffaele Dall’Erta, general manager sommelier at Hampton’s Restaurant in Sumter, South Carolina

21st Amendment Fireside Chat is a great winter beer. English style-ale, it tastes like chocolate and baking spices. Cardamom, allspice, and clove are all soft presences in the background.

It is great for warming you up on a cold winter day, while sitting near the fireplace.

Breckenridge Holidale

Andres Rairan, lead bartender at Kimpton Surfcomber Hotel’s The Social Club in Miami

Holidale from Breckenridge Brewery in Colorado has to be one of my favorite winter beers. The ABV on this bad boy is in the double digits, so you will def warm up even after one of these. The dark, red-caramel hue on this beer makes for such a beautiful beer — drink out of a nice room temperature glass and it goes down smooth, thanks to its whiskey barrel finish.

This limited series is one I always look forward to around this time of year.

Brooklyn Winter Ale

Jane Danger, national mixologist for Pernod-Ricard USA

When I want a beer on the lighter side, I really enjoy the Brooklyn Winter Ale. It is a Scottish Style Ale that has notes of coffee, malt, chocolate, rum raisin cake with a bitter citrus bite at the end. If you want to go more traditional look to the 21st Amendment Brewery, Fireside Chat. It’s a great winter ale with spices, not the other way around.

If you don’t have a fireside to sit by this will make you feel like you do. Cinnamon, nutmeg, and brown sugar toast you up all over.

Deschutes Jubelale

Joan Percival, USBG bartender in Omaha, Nebraska

Jubelale from Deschutes is awesome for winter warming. It has a nice bit of allspice without being too sweet. Pretty much a perfect winter beer.

Writer’s Pick:

Harpoon Winter Warmer

This beer literally has the words “winter warmer” in its name. You know what you’re getting into when you crack one of these open. This 5.9% ABV warming, rich beer is filled with hints of cinnamon, nutmeg, and winter spices. Mix it with Harpoons hard cider and you’ve got a real warming drink that tastes just like an apple pie.

A staple of El-P’s Twitter account is his regular tweets featuring photos of adorable animals to help brighten his followers’ days. The Run The Jewels member shared another one this morning, of a squirrel cramming a peanut into its mouth, and wrote, “please enjoy this picture of a squirrel munching on a peanut.” That post led to an amazing reveal from El’s personal life courtesy of his wife, comedian and musician Emily Panic.

Panic responded to El’s tweet, “Your spirit animal,” and followed that with an unbelievable illustration (as she noted, by artist Meryl Smith) of she and El sharing a hug, except her head is on a peacock’s body while El’s is on a squirrel’s. Responding to the image, El revealed, “true story: this was the image on me and @aprettybigmouth wedding invitation. originally our friend wanted to draw me as a tiger or some sh*t but i told her i wanted to be a squirrel.” Given the nature of the invitation, one can only imagine how fun the wedding itself was.

https://twitter.com/therealelp/status/1351860350661091328

El-P recently deleted all of his tweets, so sadly, his vast archive of cute and uplifting animal photos is lost forever. Still, this is a great way to start building a new collection, so here’s hoping that the content flows and that it prompts more heartwarming and adorable peeks into El-P’s life.

In his first speech as president, Joe Biden called for a divided America — an “uncivil war that pits reds against blues” — to come together. It’s already working on one anchor for Fox News, the network most associated with Donald Trump’s administration.

“I thought it was a great speech,” Chris Wallace said following Biden’s inaugural address. “I’ve been listening to these inaugural addresses since 1961. John F. Kennedy, ‘ask not.’ I thought this was the best inaugural address I have ever heard.”

He later called it “part sermon, part pep-talk.”

Wallace added that the speech was “a call to our better angels, a call saying look, we’ve got tremendous challenges, COVID, the economy, racial injustice, climate change, but there’s nothing we can’t do if we come together.” There’s something else that Biden said that drew Wallace’s attention, “especially us in the media… He said, ‘That there is truth and there are lies, lies that are told for power and lies that are told for profit.’ I think it was a call to all of us, whether it’s us on the air, on cable or broadcast, whether it’s us on social media, on our Twitter accounts, understanding that we have to deal from facts, from the truth, to hear each other out, as he said, a right to disagree, but not a right to violence.” You can watch Wallace’s praise for Biden above.

(Via the Hill)

President Joe Biden’s inauguration took place today, and, along with the swearing-in of a new administration, the event also marked some historic firsts for our country. Of course, Kamala Harris is key among them, becoming the first woman, the first Black woman, and the first Asian-American woman to become Vice President. But there was another history-making moment during the ceremony and it came courtesy of Amanda Gorman.

Gorman, a 22-year-old recent Harvard grad and the first person to be named National Youth Poet Laureate, also became the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history as she recited a powerful, moving piece titled, “The Hill We Climb.” Gorman wrote the piece in the wake of the Capitol Hill insurrection on Jan. 6th, and it will be included in her soon-to-be-published book coming in September. The poem, which addressed everything from white supremacy to the hope that this new administration will restore democracy and heal the divide, also contained a handful of Hamilton references that got Twitter hyped and earned a shoutout from creator Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Gorman addressed her own history too while observing the significance of the day, specifically of Harris’ appointment, saying, in “a country and a time where a skinny black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.” Gorman, who like President Biden has a speech impediment and auditory processing disorder, managed to outshine other performers like Lady Gaga and Jennifer Lopez with her inspiring speech, and Twitter was quick to take notice.

We’d like to think that this is proof nature is finally healing itself.

An egg salad sandwich is one of those dishes that I think about maybe once a year. It’s nice enough once made, but often messy and very rich. Not exactly something I crave.

But in recent years, I’ve noticed the humble egg salad sandwich grow in popularity on the internet, mostly thanks to the Japanese version, the Tamago Sando. This riff on the original features a hard or soft boiled egg added into the egg salad between two slices of soft white bread (a Tamago Sando is a pretty straightforward egg salad, otherwise).

To me, burying an egg in egg salad has always sort of felt like putting a hat on a hat while making an already messy deli stalwart even messier. Still … I was willing to give it a try.

Before stepping into the kitchen, I called up a Japanese chef who I used to party with (in the before times) and asked him the ins and outs. His biggest tip was to cool the egg salad as much as possible to make it more solid in the sandwich. The rest was straightforward advice for a really good egg salad: soft milk bread, a little sharp mustard in the mix, shallots, white pepper not black, etc.

We’re talking about deli salad here, not rocket science.

After our call, I was still incredulous that this eggy Instagram favorite would improve on the original, but I was willing to try. Here’s how it went down.

Egg Salad Sandwich/Tamago Sando

What You’ll Need in the Kitchen:

• Medium pot
• Large spoon
• Cutting board
• Kitchen knife
• Mixing bowl
• Spoon
• Sandwich-size Tupperware

Ingredients:

• 6 large eggs
• Shallot
• Lemon thyme
• 1/4 cup mayo
• 2 tbsp. Dijon mustard or similar
• White pepper
• Salt
• Soft white bread

If you want a nice and orange egg yolk, buy fresh eggs. If you want an egg that’s super easy to peel once boiled, buy fresh eggs. I added a little lemon thyme to this mix as it just made sense to bring a herbal note that also had a subtle citrus edge — something to cut through the richness of the egg salad.

Also, when I went shopping, I thought I still had a bottle of Kewpie mayo on the shelf. Turns out that was a bottle of Hellmann’s. In these times, it’s way too much effort to go back to a grocery store for one item. Hellmann’s it is! (Though Japanese-made Kewpie would have been ideal.)

As for the bread, I used this really soft Italian sandwich bread that you see in delis sometimes. It’s really, really close to the soft milk bread most sando shops use and makes for a great egg salad sammie in general.

Step 1:

Time to boil some eggs. First, I boil six eggs for 9 minutes. I remove them from the boiling pot of water when the timer goes off and place them into a basin of cold water to cool and stop cooking.

Next, I boil two more eggs for six minutes. Again, when the timer goes off, I transfer the eggs to a basin of cold water to stop the cooking and cool.

I then peel all the eggs, making sure to keep the longer boiled eggs separate from the shorter boiled ones. Next, I place them all in the fridge to cool through completely (maybe an hour).

Step 2:

Let’s make some egg salad. I do a pretty rough dice on the six eggs. Basically, I’m slicing the egg in half length-wise. Then I slice those halves into thirds length-wise. Finally, I chop those thirds up.

Next, I dice one shallot. I also de-stem about four sprigs of fresh lemon thyme.

In a medium mixing bowl, I add in the eggs, mayo, mustard, white pepper, a pinch of salt, the shallots, and the thyme. I use a standard spoon to mix the whole thing.

Once the yolk emulsifies with the mayo and mustard, you’re there. It should be very creamy and rich. Give the salad a taste and adjust for salt and pepper if needed. Add a pinch of red pepper flakes or some diced chilis if you want heat.

I then cover the bowl and place it in the fridge for about two hours to cool completely.

Step 3:

It’s time to build our sandwich!

I know this is going to be a mess. So, I’m using a sandwich form. It’s really just a Tupperware lunch box that fits sandwiches and a snack. I figure the extra space for the snack will give me some room to actually scoop out the sandwich and plate it.

I build the sandwich by placing the slice of bread in first. I then scoop in a half-inch or so layer of egg salad.

Next, I cut my eggs in half and give a pinch of salt to the yolk — a very small one. I then nestle the eggs into the egg salad, yolk side up.

Lastly, I place the slice of bread over it all and slice it down the middle, trying my best to hit the center of the intact yolks.

I then use the handle of the spoon to lift out the sandwich halves and plate them.

Bottom Line:

Yup, that looks like a Tamago Sando. Though I have to say… it’s very obvious I am not an IG food stylist.

Alright, it’s time to tuck in. I bit into the first half and it’s … okay. The egg salad is very rich, creamy, sharp, and eggy. Exactly what you want in an egg salad. But then the boiled egg comes in and takes away all that edge. It really mutes everything.

Then, of course, there’s the slippage I was worried about.

Yeah, the majority of the egg salad slipped out of this sandwich. Each bite on the boiled egg just pushed out more and more egg salad. I’ve seen these made neater with drier egg salad, but who wants that?

Maybe if I had wrapped the sandwich it would have held together a bit better? In the end, I was mostly eating a boiled egg sandwich with a really yolky mayo on it. Which was okay, I guess. I will assuredly use about half the amount of egg salad next time… if there is a next time.

Overall, this sandwich looks a lot better than it tastes. I’m fine with a sandwich being messy. But the boiled egg takes away much more than it adds. One year from now, when I actually think about egg salad again, I’ll probably skip adding the boiled egg.

Unless I become a famous food influencer between now and then.