Once the province of boxers in training, raw eggs have been a chic ingredient in New York City cocktails for the past year. So it was only a matter of time before the city cracked down on all this eggshell-cracking mixology:

Nevertheless, on that fateful evening, an inspector from the New York City Department of Health cited Pegu Club, at 77 West Houston Street in SoHo, for serving the [Earl Grey MarTEAni] without telling the customer who ordered it that it contained raw egg. The notice said it was a serious infraction that required a court appearance.

I’m all for adventuresome imbibing. Still, I’m kinda glad that the brakes are being applied here. When I’m ordering a martini — even a tea-infused one, which I’d totally dig — I’m not necessarily looking for another avant-garde additive in the glass. Although the rationale is enlightening:

“The tannins in tea, alone, can build up on your palate and exhaust it — which is one of the reasons why many people drink tea with milk and lemon,” she said. “The egg white in this drink achieves the same feat, without the potentially coating effect that you’d get from milk or cream. The raw egg white adds an ethereal mouth feel, much like a foamy mousse — the raw egg white has the ability to aerate into a much greater volume than pasteurized could.”

A heady mixture, indeed. But I’ll stick to the less-modulated chemical reactions that come from alcohol intake, sans chicken ovum. The eggs will still be there the next morning, to do their job in cutting through the hangover haze.