I DID IT!!! One of the most memorable things that I had on a recent trip to Paris happened to be the burgundy snails, also known as escargot 🐌. Yes, I ate the creepy crawlies and liked it. Here is a brief recap of my Parisian snail tale. Learn how I survived eating escargot for the first time.
One evening while walking around in the Latin Quarter (5th Arrondissement), I came upon a cozy and quaint little bistro named Le Porte Pot. They just so happened to have escargot on the menu. I had encouraged my friend (Slimy Limey) to try them before on one of his trips to France, so now it was my turn to step up to the plate. Surprisingly, I had never had them before—a kind of when in Rome thing (well, Paris), if you will.
My order came with six decent-sized delicious morsels swimming in a lovely herby, green, buttery garlic sauce. I picked up a mini two-pronged stabby-type thing and a contraption of some sort that is supposed to help you hold the shell while you pry the snail out with the other tool. I was not overflowing with confidence.
My order also arrived with a fresh green salad of arugula (rocket) and sliced radish, along with a bucket of bread. It was happy hour, and I ordered a bottle of red wine 🍷 to accompany this light meal. Yes, a bottle, not a glass! Don’t judge. 🤣
The snails were served very hot, and the snail grabber thing and I had issues from the start. Being too hot to handle by hand, I had no option but to use the escargot device. I was inclined to squeeze it to apply pressure or hold, but it is reversed. When you squeeze the thing, it opens, and the snail would fall out.
For the life of me, I could not get comfortable with this method, let alone secure a grip to extract the food from the shell. It was an epic fail, but somehow I persevered. I even managed to drop one of the shells onto the floor (that helped loosen the sucker up). That one came out easy. 😂 I hope your methods for eating escargot and surviving work better than mine did for the first time. How do you eat escargot?
Eventually, I devoured all of the tasty gastropods and dumped that wonderful green sauce onto the bread. The pieces of bread were then used like a Q-tip, scraping out every last bit of goodness from the shells. This was my method for how to eat escargot with bread.
I had a wonderful time having this experience eating escargot for the first time, or battle, depending upon how you look at it. Maybe that’s the wine talking 😀. That bottle of wine sure helped me get through this ordeal. Thankfully there were no other customers to witness my snail removal prowess. My buddy, however, was taking a video of the affair; I sense blackmail down the road. He documented my attempts how to eat escargot in shell.
You can read about more of my shenanigans, like trying to find out where to find cheap oysters in Paris. Have you ever tried escargot, or better yet, escargot in France? What did you think?
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Fabulous post. Like how you turn it into an adventure story with unexpected twists and turns. We’ve dropped shells before, too, unfortunately with witnesses around. Enjoyed the taste of the snails anyway.
Thank you, Stefan. I might just give them another go soon. Another visit to Paris is in the works. I did enjoy trying them out and having something new. I will surely consider how to best attack them again.