How Many Calories Are in 蚵仔煎 (Taiwanese Oyster Omelette)?
蚵仔煎 (ô-á-chian) is a night-market fixture: fresh oysters and egg folded into a sweet-potato starch slurry, pan-fried until the edges crisp up and the center stays slightly gelatinous, topped with leafy greens and a sweet-savory sauce (甜辣醬 or 海山醬). The English name — "oyster omelette" — suggests an egg dish. It isn't, really. The starch batter is doing most of the nutritional work, not the egg.
Standard serving (one plate, ~250–300g)
| Nutrient | Amount | % Daily Value |
|---|---|---|
| Calories | 460–560 kcal | 23–28% |
| Protein | 18–26g | 36–52% |
| Carbohydrates | 35–48g | 13–17% |
| Fat | 22–30g | 28–38% |
| Sodium | 750–1000mg | 33–43% |
The starch batter is the real calorie driver — not the oysters
Oysters themselves are lean — mostly protein, very little fat. A standard scoop of oysters on its own is roughly 60–80 kcal. What pushes the whole plate into the 500-kcal range is the sweet-potato starch slurry, pan-fried in a generous pool of oil to get that signature crisp-edge, gooey-center texture, plus a sugar-forward sauce drizzled on top.
"More oysters, less batter" plates run lower-calorie. Cheaper or high-volume stalls sometimes go the other way — more starch slurry, fewer oysters — which pushes a plate toward the top of the range.
Why other apps get this wrong
Generic calorie trackers see "egg" and "seafood" and log it as a light, protein-forward omelette. That misses the starch slurry base entirely — the batter and sauce combined usually outweigh the egg and oysters put together.
How Bao handles it
Bao reads batter thickness and sauce coverage from the photo, rather than defaulting to a plain Western-omelette calorie baseline.
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Bao gives you honest nutrition estimates for the food you actually eat.
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