Snail Salad

Rhode Island loves its snail salad. It is a familiar presence on Italian menus, seafood menus, and chicken dinner hall menus, and a spotlight hors d’oeuvre at waterside picnic shacks as well as on linen tablecloths in fine dining rooms. To be clear, it is not a salad of garden snails. The creature in question is a sea snail, what south Floridians might recognize as conch – actually a very pretty mollusk in a spiral shell. It is boiled, its meat extracted and sliced thin, then mixed with olives, celery, onion, and spice and sopped in a marinade that is bright and usually quite garlicky. Snail salad frequently is served family-style as an hors d’oeuvre to be shared by all at the table.