Conch: Not Even the Most Popular Species of Edible Snail

I recently spent a week of vacation down past Wilmington on the North Carolina coast in a little town called Kure Beach, located on a little sandbar with the wonderful name of Pleasure Island (I shit you not, PLEASURE ISLAND). My family has been spending the summers there for the past 50 years, and it is truly one of my favorite places on the planet.

Last night was the final night of the vacation, and seven of us sat down to something called a Low Country Boil. The LCB is a one-pot meal that works in exactly the same way a Maryland Blue Crab boil works - bit metal pot, lots of seafood and a few ears of corn, and enough Old Bay to kill a small child. Our LCB contained shrimp, red potatoes, ears of corn (cut in half), clams, kielbasa, mussels, and a strange little thing called conch. The conch was free from the person working the market counter, which is good because it generally runs between $7 and $11 per pound. As noted in the title of this piece, the conch is a snail, but isn't even the most well known of edible snails - that goes to the little French ones called escargot. So really, conch is like the second-best maker of zippers behind YKK. Not exactly a good thing to be. From what I've found out, the only part of the conch that you actually eat is the mantle, the white meat part that the shell grows out of.

I know when someone talks about how some type of obscure meat from questionable sources that can be defined as 'delicacy' tastes, comparison comes to chicken, and I would have to agree that conch tastes like chicken - just that part of the chicken you would never dare to put in your mouth. Beak? Brain? Something along those lines. Conch taste just as much like chicken as frog, turtle, squirrel, and catfish do, which is to say, not really. I've tried them all, and I usually respond with something about the chicken you eat must be horrible, mutated chicken. Chicken doesn't feel like that. Conch reminds me of the bubble gum from baseball card packs. I know how bubble gum companies like to create crazy, zany flavor combos for kids to chew, so here is what flavor combination conch would be: chicken, dirty saltwater, and grouper. Butter doesn't help. Old Bay doesn't help, which is a sign. No amount of cocktail sauce or salt and pepper could save this stuff. Conch is bad news. Don't let the person at the seafood counter talk you into buying it, even at a discount price. If they offer to give you some for free, take it politely, then go and use it as bait for fishing. Sharks are probably the only animal that would eat conch meat. Very hungry sharks.

In the end, I just picked out all the conch and ate the other stuff. Our Low Country Boil was great, I haven't had shrimp that good in a long time. I say the next time you go to the coast where you can get great seafood, throw down big time with an LCB. Just avoid the conch.