Five things you didn’t know about escargot:
1. The top speed a healthy, fully grown snail can reach is about 6 meters per hour.
2. A snail has a single foot, and it moves forward on it while leaving a slimy trail behind.
3. It has two pairs of tentacles: the upper pair carries its eyes, the lower pair its sense of smell.
4. Escargot is a hermaphrodite, which means it has both male and female organs.
5. Much to its own misfortune, escargot is considered a delicacy in France.

Escargot: One of the Great Delicacies of French Cuisine

There are about a hundred different kinds of snails, and the tastiest and most prized one comes from the vineyards of Burgundy and is called Gros Blanc. The classic way to serve snails is to cook them in butter, garlic and plenty of parsley, which together make a greenish sauce with a heavenly taste. The snails are served in a hot metal dish with a little hollow for each one, usually a dozen or half a dozen to a dish.

So how do you actually eat them? At a self-respecting restaurant, you’ll get a sturdy pair of tongs to hold the hot shell, and a small fork to pull the snail’s flesh out with a twisting motion, all while trying (against all odds) not to splatter sauce on your shirt. At a more casual restaurant, you can do the same thing using a piece of bread to hold the shell and a toothpick instead of a fork. Once you’ve finished all the snails, don’t forget to mop up the sauce with a fresh baguette, and then order another dozen!

So where should you go to eat snails? The most famous place for it is the village of Martigny-les-Bains, in the northeast of France, where a snail fair is held every year in the second week of May. But if you don’t feel like leaving Paris, I’m happy to say that quite a few Paris restaurants serve snails as a starter. One of my favorite spots in Paris is Chez Gladines, where they serve snails three different ways (parsley sauce, Roquefort sauce or Basque sauce). Enjoy!

On Escargot and Courage in Paris, by Moti Golan

My dear wife and I spent the last week of December 2017 in the City of Light, Paris. It was our fourth visit to this amazing, stirring city, a city that, beyond its classic, chic and artistic look, behaves like a legendary, seductive sorceress, pulling you in with her perfumed scent to taste and touch, to sin, to drink from the cup of life’s intoxication.

Neither my wife nor I are conservative when it comes to food. Even on our earlier long trip through western and southern France, we ate almost every French dish we could find on a menu. But every single time, with great hesitation, we put off eating one thing: escargots.

Escargot is, in fact, a garden snail. After it’s cleaned of all toxins and boiled in water, it’s put back into its shell, filled with garlic butter and baked in the oven for a few minutes. It’s served on a round plate shaped like a shell.

On this visit, I decided it was finally time to break through the “disgust” barrier and, true to being in Paris, act like a Parisian: to check off another milestone in conquering the celebrated French kitchen. And well… it was delicious! Off-putting, but delicious! The snail’s body had a chewy, pleasant texture. After I speared it with a special miniature fork and pulled it out of the shell wrapped in warm, aromatic garlic butter, I chewed it with a great feeling of triumph, glancing at my astonished wife and trying to put on a look of genuine sensory discovery. Well, I’m no actor.

My wife, Sigal, impressed by my courage, decided to try one escargot herself. She liked it too.

Then, when we got back to our country house, I saw my dear friends from home waiting on the entrance path. The slugs. Yes, the local escargots, the ones that are always trying to sneak into our house, the ones I’m always careful not to accidentally step on, the ones even our cats won’t touch, the ones that leave behind a shiny, damp, slimy trail.

And what worries me most is that I now find myself looking at the slugs in our yard differently than before: the look of a predator, with a slight, wicked smile on its face. A predator with a taste for revenge.

And the slugs? They look back at me in terror.