Eating Escargot for the First Time How to Survive

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 6 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.

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.

I had a wonderful time having this experience 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.

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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