The hungry, roving correspondents behind The Splendid Table's "Where We Eat" stopped by Champlin's Restaurant in Narragansett, R.I., for the July 4 episode. There, they not only guzzled gallons of clam chowder -- creamy New England style, red Manhattan style and Rhode Island style ("Briny, sweet, grayish colored clam broth is loaded with clams, potatoes, salt pork and some seasoning") -- but also feasted on some scrumptious snails. (A side order sells for $7.) The way they made it sound, in Rhode Island, snail is the new caesar.
I don't fully buy it, having lived here for a few years and only heard of snails sightings, if anywhere, at the great French restaurants Chez Pascal, on the East Side, and Pot Au Feu, downtown. But a quick search through The Providence Journal archives shows that, indeed, one can stumble upon snails on a Rhode Island menu. In June, the Projo wrote about the $8 snail salad ("something you don't find at a lot of restaurants") at Silvio's, in Johnston. Snails have apparently also crawled on the menu at Carrie's Seafood Restaurant, in North Providence, and the Atwood Grill, in Johnston. The Projo's food writer, Gail Ciampa, even featured snails in 2005, writing about the "snail-salad king," Al La Greca, owner of Rome Packing, where his majesty sells 4,500 pounds of scungilli (snail) salad every week."Of course, there aren't really snails in scungilli salad. Everyone will tell you it's conch. But in fact, scungilli are whelk, and the word even means whelk in Italian," Ciampa writes. "While both are saltwater mollusks that live in spiral shells, conch come from tropical waters, while whelk live in the cool waters off New England. Both are essentially marine snails."If that made you hungry, Rome sells two version of its snail salad, traditional and marinated. Both include, "the finest fully cooked New England cold water conch, freshly chopped celery and Spanish onions, 100% pure corn oil, blended garlic vinegars, salt, crushed pepper, sugar and selected spices."
(For New England fans of Jane and Michael Stern's food finds, the pair have also bestowed their quirky endorsements to the wieners at John’s New York Systems and the stuffed clams at Mike's Kitchen, both in Cranston, R.I.; the ginger flavor at Gray's Ice Cream and the chow mein at Evelyn's Drive-In, both in Tiverton, R.I.)
Photo of Rome Packing's snail salad by Providence Journal photographer Sandor Bodo.
