Beaminster: Dorset snails on the breakfast menu at BridgeHouse Hotel

10:07am Thursday 10th December 2009

By Ruth Meech

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.

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.