PHOTOGRAPHS: HELEN SCHRYVER, GETTY
France. Singapore. Spain. Portugal. Malta. All over the world people are mad for eating snails. In the UK it’s a different story. Perhaps because they’re redolent of that wet crunch underfoot when we’re bringing in the washing on a dusky evening, it’s seldom that snails come into British cooks’ plans for dinner.
Snail farmer (the fancy name is heliculturalist) Helen Howard would like to change our view. She wants us to reconsider the snail. Helen runs the UK’s number one snail farm, H&RH Escargots, in east Kent, which supplies top chefs all over the country. Since the company launched in 2006, sales of the unusual livestock have increased annually – and 2016 looks to be a bumper year.