Whelks in lemon-white wine broth is best served with salad and some crusty bread.Kevin Van Paassen/The Globe and Mail
I am still the weird little kid who loved escargots while my three older siblings wouldn't touch them. But now that I'm bigger, I've moved up to whelk, a giant sea snail related to the conch, that is slowly gliding into fishmongers and restaurants from the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, the Bay of Fundy and a handful of other places in the North Atlantic.
Although whelks seem new to many of us, they are actually a very old food. At Boralia, the Toronto restaurant devoted to exploring the origins of Canadian food, chef Wayne Morris serves braised whelks with seaweed and burdock. Despite being a Nova Scotian, Morris discovered whelks only recently.
"My wife is Chinese," he said. "We were at a family dinner and there was whelk in the soup. It added this nice texture and flavour, so I started doing some research and I realized it's a native food."
Meanwhile, Joe Beef's David McMillan has been serving whelks since the Montreal restaurant first opened its doors.
"Whelks are a traditional food of Quebec," McMillan said. "In taverns we eat them with beer or they are served in jars pickled in brine or vinegar. At Joe Beef in the early days, we made a nice dry whelk martini with a whelk in lieu of an olive."
Unlike land snails, which have a pronounced earthy flavour, whelks are mild and delicious and have a pleasantly chewy mouthfeel.
Nathan Young, who cooks them in a butter emulsion with bitter orange and Spanish chili powder at Bar Isabel in Toronto, says they are "similar to a clam. The flavour is a nice briny reflection of the ocean."
Prefer to eat in? Whelks are surprisingly easy to make at home and in season now through late fall. With their gorgeous shells and tasty meat, they make an exciting appetizer or lovely light lunch, and are, honestly, not weird-tasting at all.