When the orange glow of dusk falls on the Strait of Gibraltar, Tangier locals head down to the shore to tuck into some snail soup. For the past 20 years, Mohamed Ayoud’s food vans have become an almost permanent fixture until midnight, unless stocks have been depleted earlier in the evening.
From Avenue Mohamed VI to Merkala Beach – a popular spot where people congregate to celebrate Eid – a long strip of tarmac dotted with ornate street lamps and ancient palms winds its way around the city’s heights. It’s modern, it’s glamorous and it represents the new Tangier, light years away from Paul Bowles and the Beat generation. Unlike his father Hassan II, Mohammed VI is fond of the city and looks after it. Morocco’s third largest urban centre, it has an international port and a population of two million.
Mr Ayoud has seen the city change. Two of his three Mercedes vans, placed at strategic points along the seafront, have come to compete with even the ice-cream sellers. They’re hard to miss. Flashing snail lights draw in the customers, while the back of the van is transformed into a bar, supported by mirrored columns. The snail-seller stands centre stage, in front of a TV screen and next to the king’s portrait, proudly stirring the soup pot. He serves by the ladleful into little Chinese bowls.
The meat, carefully cleaned, is coaxed out of the shell using a toothpick. The brown, spicy broth left behind is optional, depending on preference. The price ranges from five to ten dirhams (40p to 80p). The van is painted all over with scenes of snails frolicking in the under growth and, as well as that, crawls with three-dimensional gastropods from the roof to the bonnet, which is adorned with twinkling fairy lights. In the ceiling are port-holes in which colour photos of snails – real ones this time – can be seen with and without lettuce leaves. Next to a stainless-steel basin, where customers can wash their fingers, shelves are neatly stacked with 16 spice jars, containing nutmeg, clove, cinnamon, star anise and so on. Flavours vary according to the season.
Just like roasted chestnuts or fries, snail soup has become a street-food classic here. It is a good source of protein, warms you up in winter and is a delicious draw in the evening. Vendors can be found in Fez’s medina, Casablanca and Jemaa el-Fnaa, the main square in Marrakesh. The history of this snack is as old as Tangier itself. Traditionally, however, the soup was sold from a modest cart, pushed through the streets. With sufficient means, the seller might have a stall at the food market.
In France, just like the much-mocked frogs’ legs, snails are part of the posh gastronomical canon and are a much-loved delicacy in Charente and Burgundy, which is said to boast the largest species in the world. Celebrated since ancient Roman times, snails there are enjoyed with parsley butter, a recipe reputedly invented for a visit by Tsar Nicholas II in 1896. In Charente, where the animal is known as a cagouille, the town of Saintes even fashioned an enormous stone snail for one of its roundabouts and came up with the motto Baver toujours, mais ne jamais médire (‘Always drooling but never gossiping’). Meanwhile, in 19th-century Paris, huge signs (now on display at the Musée Carnavalet, except for one that still remains at 49 Rue Montorgueil) consisting of sheet-metal snails decorated in gold leaf indicated the shops and restaurants where the delicacies could be found.
Mohamed had grown up seeing other little boys collect snails in the country-side and knew of families that would eat them. He was working as a delivery person, pushing his crate along on his bicycle, when his grandmother said to him: ‘Why don’t you put a pot of snails on your cart instead of tiring yourself out?’ He took her advice and did just that; by 1980 he was selling soup out of the back of his Renault.
One day he was mesmerised by the sight of a shiny new ice-cream truck: his snails, he decided, deserved something glamorous. He laboured for more than 20 years, collecting dozens of images, until he could finally make his dream a reality. ‘He had so many ideas in his head,’ his son recalls. ‘So many. He was lacking only the technical know-how. So he joined forces with an art teacher and then contacted a design studio, a polyester workshop, then a mechanic, all while overseeing every single detail.’ By 2012, his first Mercedes was close to completion. By 2018, the final touches were in place, and two other near-matching vans had been added to his fleet. Mohamed’s company, Halazon Tanger, now has 13 employees and its name is proudly displayed on the van and the wine-coloured uniforms designed by him, complete with matching hats.
Would he have dared do all this had he known the true nature of these helical gastropods, with their eyes protruding from tentacles and their peculiar mating ritual, which involves circling their mate, then rearing up and shooting it with a re-productive ‘dart’ in a slime-filled frenzy?
This off-putting mucus is said to have healing, even miraculous, properties, celebrated since the writings of Pliny the Elder. Letting a snail slither its way across a burn or a cut, as the Romans did, or drinking a glass of sugary water with a crushed snail mixed in it, are unlikely to catch on as modern-day wonder cures.
New stars in the firmament of folk art, Mohamed Ayoud’s Mercedes vans are in the tradition of 19th-century fairground attractions such as Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen. They are urban objects just like those reinterpreted by Andy Warhol, David LaChapelle and Jeff Koons.
Morocco produces some 20,000 tonnes of snails, a quarter of the global total. On the farms, it is said that cats are sometimes trained to protect the snails from their large number of natural predators, including hedgehogs and rats. However, a few special creatures manage to escape this hellish incarceration. Some people even claim that one evening, under the light of the full moon, they saw a chain of 20 petits-gris inching towards a better life.
