Beaminster: Dorset snails on the breakfast menu at BridgeHouse Hotel (From Bridport and Lyme Regis News)

Beaminster: Dorset snails on the breakfast menu at BridgeHouse Hotel

10:07am Thursday 10th December 2009

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SLOW Food doesn’t get much more leisurely than the latest addition to the menu at the BridgeHouse Hotel.

Ever dedicated to local grub with a quirky slant, the Beaminster hotel has introduced a winter dish with a distinctive, molluscular twist.

The Snail Breakfast consists of a piece of lightly fried bread topped with fresh snails and a quail egg, accompanied by mushrooms, black pudding, a piece of bacon and a grilled cherry tomato.

All the ingredients come from local sources.

The bread is baked each day at the hotel, the meats come from Beaminster butcher Nick Tett, the eggs from a supplier in Sherborne, the tomatoes from Washingpool Farm Shop and the all-important snails from Dorset Escargot, which is based at Witchampton in East Dorset.

Mark Donovan, who runs the BridgeHouse with his wife Jo, said: “We are so lucky to live here and be surrounded by so many wonderful local providers.”

He hopes the new breakfasts will be seen as a very British alternative to the traditionally French image of snails served in shells with garlic butter.

Mark said: “Fresh snails taste totally different to tinned ones. If you go to a French restaurant, the chances are you will be served tinned snails and the taste is different. Tinned snails need garlic butter but fresh ones have a taste of their own and are so succulent.”

At the BridgeHouse, chef Stephen Pielesz poaches the snails in a vegetable bouillon for an hour until they are tender and sautes them in garlic and parsley butter.

He said: “We wanted to get away from the classic French way of serving them, so instead we have come up with a great British dish with a subtle twist to it.

“We have a brasserie here, which has a French background so we do try and get a flavour of France on the menu. The frog’s legs go down well – children in particular seem to like them.”

The BridgeHouse Hotel’s Snail Breakfast, accompanied by a pot of good coffee, is a wonderfully light alternative to the traditional ‘full English’.

The dish comes beautifully presented – a square of fried home-made bread topped with snails and a quail egg, surrounded by quarters of field mushroom, a piece of bacon, grilled cherry tomato and a slice of black pudding – and cooked to perfection.

The BridgeHouse Snail Breakfast is £6.95 a head.

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