One of the biggest turn off about French cuisine for Americans is escargot. The thought of eating slimy, slithering molluscs is not appetizing until you actually try it. Escargot is the tenderest, juiciest meat without hardly any fat (2.4%). It’s already so dense in protein (15%), but cooked in butter, it becomes so super rich that you can probably eat only a few at most.

I started eating escargot since I was young and I love all the accoutrements that go with it–the tray with dimples to nestle the snails, the tiny, curved fork for extract the hiding meat, the intimidating pair of tongs that looks like it belongs to an ob-gyn, and of course, a bowl to discard the empty shells.

One of the best escargot dishes I have had was recently at Spring in DTLA. It’s a garden in microcosm, including the snails–spinach and tomato (mirepoix) ever so slightly wilted but still fresh, and drizzles of butter, parsley, and garlic mixture like snail’s glistening trail. It felt like eating an entire garden–including its succulent pests.