MAY 2019 79
the architecture is reminiscent of mod South Florida,
with crisp angles and sharp hues that stand out against
the open sky.
This isn’t just Ho Chi Minh City with sand, though. The
pace of life is relaxed, and the snail restaurant approach,
too, is slightly different. Rau ram, copious and essential
down south, is merely optional in Da Nang, its place taken
by Thai basil. There are fewer snail species, perhaps, but
there are other sea creatures such as an oval-shaped
clam called chip chip. What doesn’t change is the sense
of casual, raucous fun. The nhau ethic is alive and well
at places like Oc Ha, a streetside stall where my friends
and I slurp spicy oc len—obtuse horn shell, in English—in
coconut milk.
At Hai San Ba Cuong, a big beachside restaurant owned by a seafood dis-
tributor, I strike gold: The chef, Hong Tran, is willing to demonstrate for
me some of the recipes I’ve come to adore. In fact, they’re easy. The addic-
tive spicy brininess of grilled shrimp comes from a glaze of fish sauce, chile
paste, and sugar. To stir-fry oc huong (a speckle-shelled snail also known as
Babylonia areolata), I need “shrimp salt,” a ground mix of dried shrimp, salt,
chiles, and other ingredients that is basically Vietnamese umami (and sold
in jars). I even get an aha moment when Tran makes grilled pen shell with a
classic scallion-peanut-shallot topping that, it turns out, is bound by oyster
sauce. I can make this at home, I realize, with mussels or clams (recipe p. 112).
Even at Nen, a high-end restaurant started by food blogger and chef
Summer Le, the recipes are within reach. To make mantis shrimp, Le
simply poaches and carefully shells them, then sets them in a bowl of
clam broth and coconut juice with a drizzle of curaçao that turns the soup
lagoon-blue. Her take on tamarind crab, another snail-restaurant standard,
substitutes soft-shell crab for hard-shell, sauced with a mix of tamarind,
lemongrass, ketchup, chicken bouillon powder, and nen, a pea-size garlic-
shallot hybrid that’s a Da Nang specialty. Of course, Le plates it beauti-
fully at her restaurant (with lime foam!), but I’d be happy sliding it into a
baguette for a beach-picnic banh mi.
The most important snail lesson I learn in Da Nang, however, is not at a
restaurant. It’s on a boat—a crusty fishing trawler where I spend an over-
night shift with fishermen Cuong, Loc, and Binh as they circle the bay,
pausing every couple hours to haul in their net and sort through the results:
fish and shrimp large and small, a rainbow of crabs, and lots of snails, some
the size of lacrosse balls, others long and corkscrew-y. Then they toss the
net back out and tool around some more.
Around 2 a.m., they summon me to the stern, where they’ve boiled up a
portion of the night’s catch in plain water. We sit there in the dark, plucking
meat from mantis shrimp and cracked crabs and weird snails, dipping them
into a bowl of salt and chiles. It’s all buttery and salty and sweet and spicy,
free of technique, the flavor based purely on freshness. It may be the best
seafood I’ve ever had, and I can understand why these guys do this tough
job with its impossible hours. The only thing missing, I realize, is beer.
The concept is simple:
A snail restaurant is
a casual place you go with
friends to chat,
drink, and eat every
kind of mollusk and
crustacean found along
Vietnam
,
s coastline.
left: At Nen, a fine-dining restau-
rant in Da Nang, chef Summer Le
riffs on snail-restaurant standards
with dishes like soft-shell crab in
tamarind sauce. below: Street food
in Da Nang.
FOOD STYLING: TORIE COX; PROP STYLING: CHRISTINE KEELY
