Here's Why a Viennese Farmer Says Snails Are the Protein of the Future

From the bistros of Paris to the restaurants of Bourgogne and beyond, escargots are prepared, served, and consumed as a quintessential French dish, typically smothered, quite liberally, in savory garlic and herb French butter. However, this delicacy of land snails that has become synonymous with the French kitchen may have found its popularity by way of Vienna, where today, one eccentric snail farmer is resurrecting the culinary glory days of his ancestors.

“In many cultures, snails are very, very popular,” says Andreas Gugumuck, founder of Gugumuck Wiener Schnecken Manufaktur. “And my goal was to reintroduce this old Viennese tradition.”

Are snails the food of the future?

Gugumuck grew up on his family’s produce farm in suburban Vienna’s 10th District, but like many of his peers, studied computer science and moved away to the city to work an office job. However, after about six years at IBM, he followed his interests and sought out a craft that differed from the trending but trite early 2000s hobbies of winemaking or brewing small batch craft beer. Reading an article about celebrated Austrian chef Christian Petz, he learned about snails’ significance in Vienna’s culinary past and came to the conclusion that the terrestrial gastropod mollusk could actually be the protein of the future — if people were ready to embrace it.

“Most people don’t like snails, but you have a niche,” he says. “If the rest say, ‘maybe they’re good,’ but are a little bit afraid to taste it, but when they taste it, love it, that works.”

Since 2008, the IBM employee-turned-snail farmer has bred snails back on his family farm, where snail production is relatively low maintenance — especially when compared to beef production. The soil in his snail-raising garden is already calcium-rich, and the feed is as environmentally friendly as it is nurturing. Snails merely feed on organic vegetable food scraps which creates a byproduct of organic compost, which supports the garden. The result is a sustainable food source with a comparable amount of protein to beef, but with far less sodium, no fat, and a much smaller carbon footprint than raising beef cattle.

The history of Viennese snails

Viennese snails, or Wiener Schnecken in the local German language, were a major source of protein in the early 19th century, mostly for poor folk, just as they’d been for centuries. In fact, they date back to the Roman Empire, where people across the domain cultivated snails as a food source. However, according to Gugumuck, snails had a moment of haute cuisine during the Congress of Vienna of 1814–15, when European leaders met in Vienna to organize territories across the continent after the fall of Napoleon. Vienna’s location between France and Russia was the perfect stage for diplomatic relations between the two border countries — and Viennese snails played a part in it.

“The French foreign minister, Monsieur Talleyrand, stayed here in Vienna, and his chef was the best chef worldwide,” Gugumuck says, referring to 19th-century French chef Antonin Carême, in his tale of how France tried to influence Russian czar Alexander I through a meal. “How can you blame a monarch? You serve a monarch with the first plate, and it is a poor man’s food — and he doesn’t know that this is a poor man’s food. And it was a fantastic meal, but it was just garlic, butter, and parsley. [Alexander] was amazed about this dish. And for the Viennese people, it was normal.”

Talleyrand’s plan to influence Russia politically via Viennese snails wasn’t successful, but the results started a broader trend. “Since this time, it was popular in Paris. It started in Vienna and then Paris. [Paris] was the middle of the world in the 19th century — about fashion, about meals. And so this meal got popular worldwide.”

Despite the significance of snails in Vienna’s history, their consumption diminished over time. By the 1980s, later generations were far removed from the days of snails as a food. Concurrently, wild snails became a protected species by the Austrian government, despite their nutritional value. Farmed snails were permissible though, and it wasn’t until Gugumuck’s efforts in 2008 that they started making a real comeback in Vienna.

His first run was 20,000 farm-bred snails to entice and impress Vienna’s top chefs. Ultimately, through his efforts, more chefs embraced his product, and today, he and his team breed and distribute roughly 300,000 snails per year.

A farmer’s passion for snails

Gugumuck has such a passion for snails throughout Vienna’s history that he’s even played a part as a snail vendor in Netflix’s 19th-century period thriller series Freud, in which the famed psychoanalyst assists the police in solving a string of murders. However, his passion goes beyond the streaming service. In 2014, Gugumuck, with his own snails, started a snail-forward Gartenbar on his farm — a restaurant and gathering place for events, food, and perhaps a glass of his own produced wine.

Here, Gugumuck educates on the snail as the food of the future and showcases its versatility as a protein-rich ingredient. With a neutral taste, snails can lean savory or sweet depending on the recipe, which is exemplified by dishes like fried snails and chips, smoked snails with babaganoush, snails in a terrine of liver cheese, snail and vegetable flatbread pizza, and candied snails (with simple syrup and spiced rum). They’re also served the traditional way, but with less intensity than the French, so the snails aren’t completely masked by herbs, garlic, and butter. Cappuccinos here may not be infused with snails, but the latte artists can make the image of a snail with milk foam.

Gugumuck has come a long way since his idea of breeding snails came to him about two decades ago, to the snail advocate he is today.

“Before, I had snails in my life maybe… two times,” he recalls about his pre-mollusk days. “[But] I loved their story.”

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