Snails, snails and snails...at Bà Cô Lốc Cốc

Vietnamese love snails! I hope it's not coming from a famous French tradition. Actually I have no idea since when we love snails. I remember my mom, she loved eating those small snails, we called "ốc gạo" (rice snail, probably because of their tiny size) with a...needle, we need a needle in order to take those little green meats out from the shell and dip it in incredibly tasty "sugar-sweet, lemon-sour, pepper-spicy fish sauce". When I was a kid, I probably prefer to taste the sauce much more than the snail.

Later my mom also loved the other snail dish "ốc len xào dừa" (mud creeper in coconut sauce). I also like it...because of the super tasty sauce, but this time I could enjoy the snail, partly due to the unique way of eating this snail. Blow and suck it!

                      Bà Cô Lốc Cốc - a snail restaurant in Saigon...

When I start this blog, I had a review about eating snails, it was long ago when I went out with my nieces to try snails as a street food, in some famous eating spots in district 4. Now the snails slowly move to more decorated places...and with quite strange name "Bà Cô Lốc Cốc"!

               All kinds of snails in display - some shells remind me as souvenirs from the ocean! 

             All names probably based on the shell shape, like snail hat - second on left hand side! 

It's quite a nice place, the counter reminds me an image of a simple Japanese restaurant, with the glass display and many kinds of snail in it. Especially the menu is on the iPad, so scroll up and down to select it!

             A couple is checking the menu on the iPad, others - probably posting their just eaten dishes.

We are a group of 4, before coming to this restaurant, one of our friends recommended to try the snail hot pot. Here they have several different flavours for hot pot: from Thai sweet sour spicy to typical traditional Northern sour taste, after a quick discussion we followed the advise from the staff, we ordered snail hot pot with Thai spicy style. It was good but to me personally, the soup was a bit too sweet, quite strong flavour.

             Snail hot pot with a lot of veggies and mushrooms...sour sweet and spicy in Thai style.  

                Typical veggies - shredded flower of banana tree, water spinach, pumpkin flower... 

                  and here our main heroes : snails 

                    Taking out snail from the shell, one by one, into the hot pot...

              and here we go - a bowl of snail hot pot with rice vermicelli (or noodles) 

Besides the main dish - the hot pot we still ordered the other snail-dishes. I can't remember the names but some good, some not good. We were disappointed on the snail in coconut sauce, a terribly popular and favourite by many people in Saigon, but here - the kitchen didn't use the fresh coconut to make the sauce, they used either from the can or coconut powder!

              This snail was good, I quite liked it...

               but this was OK, snail stirred in salt and pepper...  

            This was good, to be honest, I can't remember any name of snail...

            but this one was our biggest disappointment due to the coconut sauce...

 Eating snails is very popular in Vietnam, in some other areas like in the North - they surely have different style of preparations, I didn't have a chance to taste but will do it some day!

Back to our snail restaurant in Saigon, I was quite curious about the name "Bà Cô Lốc Cốc", I should have asked the staff what does it mean, otherwise my translation could be wrong "An untidy auntie", anyway the place is not untidy, quite nice, simply elegantly decorated, the dish was quite good, the price surely more expensive if we compared with those - on the street. So, it's well worth a visit to discover the snail dishes.

Here you go the address - Bà Cô Lốc Cốc at 222 Khánh Hội, Q4, Sài Gòn. Enjoy it!