escargots et grenouilles! entrer mon ventre!

last week i found myself in paris for a long weekend after being graced with some rather cheap eurostar returns. i took along lois, and we did the usual - you know, eiffel, champs elysee, triomphe, that obelisk thing, the louvre, notre dame, disneyland (awesome.) - and eventually found ourselves in the latin quarter surrounded by wine, cheese, the french and restaurants. i immediately knew what i had to do, and sought out an appropriate eatery for some 'specialités françaises'. (let's all take a precious second to welcome a new member of the beast feaster team - a camera i won!) we stumbled into an intriguingly named eatbox, 'le tango du chat'. optimistically hoping for some sort of dish comprising of a feline in an orange soft-drink marinade, we entered. unfortunately, no kittenesque snacks were on offer. we just had to hold out that the name didn't simply mean 'cat piss'. luckily, there were a couple of reasonably priced french options on the menu, to which i was both delighted and a little nervous. lois opted for a massive bowl of over-cheesed onion soup which she couldn't eat all of. probably the biggest shock of the entire trip there. i opted for the glory that is snails first of all.

six shells were brought out to me on a special plate, each oozing their green treasure everywhere. hooray did not spring to mind. eyeing them up i was reminded of.. nothing. there seriously is nothing that looks similar to it. i grasped the magic snail holding device in my right hand and the tiny, tiny snail poking fork in my left. attack!

after about five minutes of fumbling around like a tourist, much to the disgust of the other diners and the french as a whole, i finally managed to pick up a snail in the special snail grabber. another five minutes passed before i actually managed to hook a bloody snail out of the shell, garlic sauce everywhere. especially not on the snail itself. i gave it a good precautionary sniff which gave pleasing results. i went for it. i didn't let the disturbing texture play on my tongue for too long before going for the chew. the snail was pretty hot, as was the sauce, and also now my tongue. the texture on the chew was pretty reasonable, i am a person who does not like anything that resembles chewing rubber bands and this was damn smooth. the garlic complimented it with precision that only the french could deliver and gave an incredible overall taste. it was not gritty at all, something that i had been warned about by my friend dan. for shame, dan! the other five snails rapidly succumb to the same fate and my stomach. it's not a filler, but that was a good thing as my second order came in..

there is something rather creepy about these frog's legs. nay, something insanely creepy about these frog's legs. and no it wasn't the questionable salad. it's the fact that they looked like tiny baby legs. look at the toes!

however the beast feaster does not dwell on such things and i dove straight in with my knife and fork, peeling off some poor frog's muscles. they're mine now, hoppy! or not hoppy, as it goes. the dish was presented in a provincial sauce with black olives. to say it was tomatoey is to say that wine is grapey. this masked the taste a little, but i could still make something out. i will take this moment to quell the myth that "frog's legs taste like chicken". lies, all lies. stupid, mindless lies. frog's legs taste like you're eating teeny, tiny animals. possibly maliciously. yes, there's definitely a taste of maliciousness in there. and talk about working for your food! i got repetitive strain injury just trying to chop off the muscles, each the size of a well used pencil. i'm talking really well used here - one you can't sharpen anymore without risking your fingertips.

funnily enough, the frogs was not as nice as the snails, i thought it would be the other way around. maybe it was the effort involved, though probably not as each required a certain type of effort and open-mindedness to eat. in a fight of flavour on flavour however, snails would be a clear winner with an uppercut to the taste buds like none before.