From super spicy cassava chips to things you wouldn’t normally put in the deep fryer, Bandung has always been known to be a culinary haven, a sort of incubator for the exotic and for exciting innovation.
The city’s latest craze comes in the form of freshwater apple snails ( Pila ampullacea ) known locally as tutut , normally found in rice fields or fish ponds and considered a delicacy for people in the rural fringes of this West Java metropolis.
With rice fields and forests transformed into housing and industrial areas, people began searching for tutut dishes to indulge their childhood nostalgia.
Enter Bambang Widjonarko, who opened a small establishment called Kafe Getek on Jalan Emong in Bandung. The restaurant serves all things tutut, from traditional dishes to modern fusions like steak tutut, tutut sausages and even tutut cream soup.
Yuni Ekawati, a clerk and a regular, said tutut used to be a must-have dish for special occasions when she was a child. Growing up, Yuni used to go out and hunt for tutut in her grandmother’s fish pond.
Yuni, now a 36-year-old mother of two, said the pond was long gone and with it her favorite food.
“Now I have to pay whenever I feel like eating tutut. I’m addicted. I like the flavor and texture and there’s a bit of nostalgia too,” she said.
“There is an art to eating tutut,” Yuni added as she sucked the meat out of its shell.
Bambang said that most days he sold between 20 and 30 kilograms of tutut dishes. Most of the customers come to sample the traditional recipe of tutut slow-cooked with ginger, turmeric, galangal, shallots, salt and chili peppers to dampen the strong, muddy taste.
“Tutut live in mud, in places like rice fields or in river sediments. So we need time to get rid of the mud and its foul smell,” he said adding that the whole process of preparing the snail takes up to 11 hours.
Bambang said the snails needed to be washed and rinsed repeatedly before they were considered clean enough. The shell is then cut at its tip to allow the mud out and the spices in before the snail is cooked in boiling water. Tutut is usually cooked twice and sometimes more, particularly when the snail comes from rice fields filled with pesticides.
But the result is a delicious dish with chewy meat and savory flavor.
Customers have five sauces to choose from, including black pepper, barbecue and oyster. “The other two are mixed spices sauce and ‘Step-Mom,’ which is extra spicy hot,” Bambang said.
For customers not used to tutut’s strong muddy taste, Bambang recommends well-processed dishes like tutut steak or tutut nuggets.
The idea for tutut steak all started when a customer came in saying he had hepatitis and was prescribed tutut by a traditional healer.
“But he didn’t like the original taste so we made him a steak. He loved it and he kept coming back for more,” Bambang said.
Nutritional expert Kunkun Wiramiharja from Padjadjaran University said tutut was rich in protein and calcium. The hepatitis-healing claims, he added, “has never been scientifically proven.”
Kunkun warned about eating too much tutut, or too frequently, noting that the snails lived in bodies of water that could be polluted.
Bambang said he sourced all his snails from Jatiluhur dam, which he said was less polluted and produced healthy and high-quality snails.
Although some customers come because they believe tutut can cure hepatitis, Bambang said such customers were in the minority, adding that most came more for the snail’s rich flavor and unique texture.
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