What Italians throughout New England call scungilli, Rhode Islanders know as snails. And while scungilli salad is fairly rare, snail salad is ubiquitous in the Ocean State. It is on Italian menus, seafood menus, and chicken dinner hall menus, a spotlight hors d’oeuvre at waterside picnic shacks as well as on linen tablecloths in fine dining rooms. To understand the locals’ passion, you must first realize that it is not a salad of garden snails. The creature in question is a sea snail, what south Floridians might recognize as conch—actually a very pretty mollusk in a spiral shell. It is boiled, its meat extracted and sliced thin, and then mixed with olives, celery, onion, and spice and sopped in a marinade that is bright and usually quite garlicky. Snail salad almost always is served as an hors d’oeuvre to be shared by all at the table, family-style.
Snail salad at a seafood joint in Narragansett, Rhode Island.