Larry David, the lead character on HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, bringing his own eggs to the country club is a recent plot of the “Disgruntled” episode of the 12th and final season of the series.
Why? David (both the character and real-life person) has an issue with places like the country club not offering breakfast past 11am. Plus, he wants to make sure his eggs are organic. “I brought my own eggs,” David says in the episode as he hands over several brown eggs, which he pulled from his hat, to the bewildered waitress. “Can you give these to the chef?”
HBO
“They’re organic,” David says. “The ones you have are full of antibiotics.” His girlfriend Irma (Tracey Ullman) concurs, stating that traditional eggs “give men breasts … Larry can grow breasts.”
As the episode progresses, David brings his eggs to the club again, this time before 11am, and with his own bread. When his food arrives, David complains that the eggs do not taste like the eggs that he brought and accuses the waitress of having a “breakfast grudge” before being confronted by club owner Mr. Takahashi (Dana Lee).
Takahashi asks David to stop bringing his own eggs to which he replies “eggs are not eggs,” before the club owner asks if David is “disgruntled”—a reference to the anonymous signatory of a complaint letter Takahashi found about the club.
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The bad eggs
David is right about one thing. Not all eggs are created equal, and chickens are some of the most abused and least protected animals on factory farms.
Seeking organic eggs is one step in the right direction as the USDA requires that these eggs come from chickens who are not given antibiotics or hormones and are fed organic feed made without additives such as animal by-products, synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, or chemicals.
Unsplash
Chickens who lay organic eggs must also be given access to the outdoors. However, because the egg industry ultimately treats hens as commodities, producers often cut that access down to small concrete porches to maximize profits.
This means that while the potential for animal welfare might be highest for organic labels, in practice, the label does not certify humane treatment.
Bring these eggs to the club
Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Larry David (the character) is often modeled after his real-life namesake, which happens to be the case with this egg storyline, the show’s executive producer Jeff Schaffer confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter.
As it turns out, the real David has been known to bring his own eggs (and bread) to the country club. If in addition to avoiding antibiotics and hormones, avoiding animal welfare issues is also a concern for David, there are exciting vegan eggs that he can bring to the club instead.
Eat Just
1Just Egg
Just Egg is already approved by J.B. Smoove—who plays Leon Black on Curb Your Enthusiasm and voiced “Really Good Eggs,” Just Egg’s first television commercial in 2021.
And Eat Just, the company behind the mung-bean-based eggs, recently hit a major milestone. Since its introduction in 2019, Just Egg has now sold an equivalent of more than half a billion traditional eggs.
In addition to being free from antibiotics, hormones, and cholesterol, the environmental impacts of Just Egg are significantly lower than traditional eggs. In hitting its milestone and making eggs from plants instead of using animals, the company avoided approximately 87 million kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions; conserved more than 18.3 billion gallons of water, and spared around 26,900 acres from agricultural use for soy and corn cultivation needed for poultry feed.
Recognized for its low allergenic and cholesterol-free properties, the mung bean has been identified by The Good Food Institute in a 2023 study as a largely overlooked crop with significant potential within the alternative protein sector.
“We started with a hope that one of the many tens of thousands of plants we looked at would be able to scramble like an egg. And a team made up of scientists, engineers, and chefs from across the world turned that hope into one of the most innovative and impactful products in the market,” Josh Tetrick, the CEO and co-founder of JUST Egg, said in a statement.
“We’re 500 million steps closer to a more sustainable food system, but we’ve got a long way to go,” Tetrick said.
If David wants to bring Just Egg to the club, he can now get it at more than 48,000 grocery outlets or, for a sit-down meal, he can try Just Egg at 3,300 dining establishments across the United States and Canada. The vegan liquid egg now comes in an even more environmentally friendly paper carton and its frozen folded version can also travel well.
While Just Egg holds more than 99 percent of the vegan egg market share, it’s not the only option for David to bring to the club.
Yo! Egg
2Yo Egg
If David is looking for a runny yolk for his post-11am breakfast, Yo Egg is an excellent contender.
Yo Egg, a Los Angeles startup, designed its products to closely mimic the texture and appearance of traditional sunny-side-up and poached eggs. This innovation is underpinned by a combination of soy and chickpea proteins, sunflower oil, and a “runny” yolk encapsulated by an alginate film.
“We’re bringing a ‘whole egg’ experience, complete with a perfect egg white and runny yolk, using two distinct technologies,” Yo Egg CEO Eran Groner told AgFunderNews.
“One is our specialized egg white system, which allows us to deliver the right texture for each format. It can be fried, poached, or boiled,” he said. “It’s all about the phasing, timing, and temperatures, not just the recipe, so it would be very hard to reverse engineer it.”
The other part of the system is for scaling the egg yolk manufacturing per machine to 50,000 yolks per day to compete with chicken eggs. “In a room that’s 200 square feet, we can have four such machines, so that’s 200,000 yolks per day, which if you do the math is already a scaled egg farm in the United States if you have 200,000 birds laying eggs,” Groner said.
By simulating the entire egg experience without involving animals, Yo Egg addresses both health concerns associated with cholesterol and saturated fats and the ethical dilemmas posed by the conventional egg industry.
The vegan eggs will soon be available in four-packs in the freezer sections of select Los Angeles area supermarkets. Yo Egg aims for broader accessibility with a pricing strategy that starts at $6.99, with hopes to reduce the cost to $5.99 in the future.
Crafty Counter
3WunderEggs
If a whole egg—perhaps for a Cobb salad from a previous episode—is in David’s breakfast future, Crafty Counter’s WunderEggs delivers. This Texas-based brand has carved a niche in the plant-based food scene by introducing a vegan hard-boiled egg that remarkably mimics the traditional egg experience without the use of animal products.
Crafted with a base of nuts, including cashews and almonds, along with coconut milk and agar—a seaweed-based gelatin substitute—these eggs are colored and flavored with turmeric and nutritional yeast to replicate the familiar look and taste of hard-boiled eggs.
The inspiration behind WunderEggs stemmed from a critical observation by Crafty Counter Founder and CEO, Hema Reddy, during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Witnessing the strain on the country’s food systems and contemplating the environmental impact of intensive factory farming, Reddy saw an urgent need for sustainable, plant-based alternatives.
“My inspiration for WunderEggs came during the first two weeks of COVID when our country’s food systems began to break down,” Reddy states on the brand’s website. “We are so excited to bring this vegan revolution to all the plant-based food lovers [who] haven’t eaten a boiled egg in a long time. They no longer have to miss out on a breakfast or snack favorite.”
And for people concerned about missing out on breakfast (ahem, David), these vegan eggs are available at Whole Foods—way past 11am—and are easily transported to the club in a hat.
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Anna Starostinetskaya is the Senior News Editor at VegNews and is always keeping an eye on all things vegan in her home city of San Francisco, CA and everywhere else.
