Medha Imam: When you picture eating snails,
you may think of a buttery French delicacy.
But halfway across the world,
there's another type of snail that is just as popular.
And it's called ốc, or "sea snails."
In the streets of Vietnam,
people have been eating them for centuries.
That's Dan Dao, a Vietnamese American
travel and culture writer.
He's joining me today to teach me how to eat sea snails.
Dan Dao: It was, like, the whole experience.
A trash can full of shells under you,
you're drinking a ton of beer,
and everything's really loud and kind of communal,
and everyone's eating with their hands.
Like, that whole experience, it's more than just a dish.
Jimmy Ly: Snails is very, very popular in Vietnam,
and people just eat snails and drink beer all day.
Medha: That's Jimmy Ly, chef and owner
of Madame Vo BBQ in the East Village of New York City.
He says there are a few reasons why sea snails
are so prevalent in Vietnam.
One of them is geography.
Since Vietnam is a coastal country
bordering the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea,
seafood is available everywhere.
Jimmy: With the snails, it's so easily accessible
in the country, and it tastes so good.
Medha: Sea snails also play a role in Vietnam's
cultural practice of social eating.
Jimmy: So, in Vietnam, we do nhậu.
It means "eat and drink"
and symbolizes family and group gatherings.
Dan: People really sit out on a plastic stool.
You get there after work, and you stay super late,
eating snails and drinking beer.
Medha: Dan says that back in Ho Chi Minh City,
there's a whole road dubbed Snail Street
that's lined with restaurants
and stalls cooking up snails and seafood.
Now, some may think the culture
of eating snails came to Vietnam
when the French colonized the country in the late 1800s,
but archaeological evidence tells us a different story.
According to author Vu Hong Lien,
piles of discarded snail shells were discovered
in Nghệ An province of northern Vietnam
that date back to over 10,000 years.
Andrea Nguyen: Vietnamese people, we eat,
you know, anything we can find, practically,
and I don't think that the French arriving
in Vietnam signaled in any way, like,
"Hey y'all, let's go eat snails."
So this notion that Vietnamese snails, you know,
the eating of them and the preparation of them
were somehow influenced by the French,
I don't see evidence of that.
Medha: Other differences between the dishes?
Well, French escargot is typically prepared
with land snails, while ốc is freshwater or sea snails.
The French dish can also cost up to $50 a plate,
while ốc typically goes for about $4 per plate
in the streets of Vietnam.
To see just how ốc are prepared here in New York,
I joined chef Jimmy in his kitchen.
He's one of the first restaurateurs
to introduce nhậu, the culture of snail eating, to the city.
Jimmy: Today we're making ốc xa ut.
So it's a lemongrass-boiled sea snails.
All the flavors are already in the snail,
and what we want to do is to enhance the flavors
with lemongrass, red chili peppers, and lime leaves.
So this is a very simple way,
very traditional in Vietnam,
and you're gonna cook it down
and let all the flavors come in
and be embodied into the snails.
Medha: Surrounded by the aroma of herbs and spices,
my curiosity was piquing, and I couldn't wait
to try ốc with Dan.
Dan: You've never had snails before?
Medha: Never, I have never. Dan: Like, not even escargot?
Medha: Not even escargot. Dan: OK.
Medha: Hello! Dan: Oh, this will be good.
Jimmy: Hey, what's up, guys?
Medha: Thank you!
Dan: So you've never had snails, so let me show you
how to eat it.
Medha: OK.
Dan: It's this little guy, and you're gonna kind of
pull it out, and it's really intuitive I think,
'cause you see how it's, like, the meat is kind of curled,
like, based on the shape of the shell, all right?
So you kind of put it right here,
and you pull in kind of a swirling motion
and, like, turn it at the same time,
like you're unscrewing it.
Then you take off this little part, this hard part.
Medha: Yeah. Dan: And then you dip it.
Then you just pop it right in.
Medha: What am I supposed to expect with the taste of this?
Dan: I mean, it's gonna taste a little seafood-y.
It is a sea snail, so it does come from the ocean.
Kind of like clam, like, it's gonna have a bite to it.
There'll be some texture, some kind of, like, chewiness,
and this one's a little spicy 'cause of the chilies.
Pull out, so you have leverage
to kind of pull it out Medha: Oh!
that way. Medha: Did I do it?
Dan: Yeah, perfect, exactly!
Medha: OK, now I put this in here?
Dan: Yeah.
And then just dip it.
Medha: OK.
Here I go, guys, my first time having sea snails!
Dan: What do you think?
Medha: It's more chewier than I expected.
Dan: Mm-hmm, yeah, definitely.
Medha: But oh, my God, that dipping sauce is magical.
Dan: Salty, sweet, sour.
That's what I love about Vietnamese food in general
is that they always try to hit that balance.
Medha: I expected these sea snails
to be softer inside, in terms of, like, texture.
I thought it would be more like a pudding consistency.
Dan: No, not at all.
That's the thing.
I don't really like that mushy thing,
so I'm actually kind of glad that it has, like, a bite
like you're eating, like, razor clam or something.
Medha: Yeah.
I don't want to say it tastes like chicken,
but it's definitely...[laughs]
It's definitely, like,
much more chewier, Dan: Yeah.
and the texture is kind of cartilage-y.
But the sauce, the sauce really does it.
It's spicy, it's salty, it's flavorful,
and it just makes this such a great experience.
Dan: Yeah.
Medha: Next, we tried chef Jimmy's modern take on ốc.
Jimmy: Our second dish is just, we use periwinkle sea snails
with garlic fish sauce basil reduction.
Dan: So, depending on how it's cooked,
you're gonna eat it a different way.
Like, this one's been wok stir-fried,
so it's gonna be softer,
so you can just literally suck it right out of the shell,
and there is plenty of flavor
on the shell as well,
so you're just gonna kinda get right in there.
[slurping]
All right.
Yeah?
Medha: I don't know if I got it, but,
wow, the shell, the part –
Dan: I know, the flavor's so good.
Medha: The flavor's so good.
Dan: Yeah, when you cook it, it gets softer,
but you can still pick it out with a toothpick, or...
Medha: I think I got it!
Oh, my God, I could literally, like, eat this all day.
It's just so good.
Dan: So what do you think of this one
compared to that one?
Medha: I love this one so much,
and it's kind of addicting to eat these.
Dan: Right?
Like, once again, it's like...I mean, people in the States
who go to, like, seafood boils or crawfish boils, like,
that whole idea of eating fresh seafood with your hands,
like, that'll be a familiar thing for most people,
even if it's snails and not crawfish.
Medha: I wanna try this one again.
This one is a bigger snail it seems like, right?
Dan: Yeah, these aren't exactly like the ones
that you would get in Vietnam, but they're close,
and it kind of shows how Vietnamese immigrants
kind of, like, adapted whatever food they could find here
to the same cooking methods that they used in Vietnam.
Medha: Which is amazing.
It's like, people who came here obviously wanted
to stay attached to their culture
and their cuisine, and they did whatever they could
to find ingredients that emulated that.
I'm actually glad you were here to show me,
because otherwise, I'd probably, like,
stare at it for quite a while
to see, like, how am I supposed to get the meat out?
Dan: To be honest, I never even liked this
when I was growing up, but then later when I grew up
and I started going to Vietnam, I just, like,
I realized that it wasn't just the food,
it was, like, the whole experience,
which is, like, sitting outside,
eating snails with your hands.
I've never felt so Vietnamese
as when I was, like, in Saigon on Snail Street
chilling with a beer and, like, a bucket of snails.