The Dord of Darien

Escargot: the art of eating goddamn snails

So I was on vacation last week (which, incidentally, is why I didn’t update my world-famous blog for a few days), and I had Escargot for the first time. If you’ve never had Escargot, and I assume you haven’t because I know who reads this blog, it can be a little bit intimidating; here comes this little plate looking all fancy and some little tiny forks, like the kind you use to eat lobster. There are some lovely little mushroom caps there and some roasted garlic and on top of it all are these goddamn snails, right there, in the middle of the plate, looking snaily as anything.

Your first reaction is going to be to smell the mushrooms and the garlic and the herbs and think to yourself, hey, that smells really good. Then you see the snails and think to yourself, hey, I didn’t realise they’d still have the stupid snaily eye-stalk things sticking up like that. That really makes this snail thing look like I’m actually eating snails, which is something I may not be as prepared for as I thought. Then you probably think, well, what the hell, I already paid for this.

It turns out they’re very subtle and buttery; they don’t taste snaily at all. Don’t argue with me, now – you know exactly what I mean. They’re surprisingly firm, too; I rather expected they’d be sort of slimy and mushy, but they aren’t. They’re a bit crispy on the outside (especially the freaky disconcerting goddamn snaily eye stalks), but they don’t seem to be filled with any type of goo or jelly or slime. We had them served (as I mentioned before) over mushroom caps with roasted garlic, and the whole dish frankly had quite a pronounced mushroom flavour with only a hint of snail. So, really, I’d say I quite liked it, and far and away the freakiest part was the part where you’re sitting there thinking about how you’re eating snails.

Oh, and the eye stalks.

October 29th, 2007 Posted by Darien | Food | one comment