Cruce is already lighting the stoves of Sant Marc: 6,000 kilos of snails in four days
The Vilafranca restaurant expects to serve up to 13,000 portions during the festival week, with a preparation that mobilizes dozens of pots and hundreds of kilos of alioli
Manacor“We started 20 years ago. Little by little. Now everyone promotes and cooks Sant Marc snails… but at the time we were the first”, explains Guillem Garí, owner of the Es Cruce restaurant in Vilafranca, the temple of one of the most sought-after Majorcan dishes this week on the island.
Whether due to superstition or simple culinary taste, those of Saint Mark are especially revered. For their supposed healing virtue against circulatory or rheumatic problems: “He who eats snails for Saint Mark is blessed all year round”, and for festive fame, so as not to break a tradition that before restaurants was in private kitchens and local recipe books.
That is why, if Es Cruce is famous every year, it is because of its figures. The Vilafranca restaurant cooks more than 12,000 portions (dressed with 700 kilos of alioli) in a few days. 6,000 kilos between this Wednesday (when the large 60-kilo pots begin to cook) and Saturday, the saint's day.
“It all began around 2007 when we decided to follow family advice and cook them on a larger scale on Saint Mark's Day. That first year we made 500 kilos, which already seemed like a lot to us. Soon after, we were at 2,000 and, for some years now, 6,000”, explains Garí, while stirring the contents of one of the 80 pots that Es Cruce prepares for the occasion. “We estimate serving between 12,000 and 13,000 portions in four days, especially the day before and, obviously, all day on Saint Mark's Day”.
What are they wearing?
–Fennel, marjoram, a few cloves of garlic, salt, botifarra, sausage, lean meat, ribs, chicken or young chickens, and pig ears”. And a cooking time that can last up to five hours. “At three hours, the chicken must be added, and with one hour to go, the rest of the meats, so that everything is just right”.
Of these 6,000 kilos of snails, more than half will be served to go, while the rest will be progressively served among the 500 people who fit in each meal shift. All accompanied by up to 700 kilos of alioli "made artisanally with garlic, oil, milk and salt… without egg", adds Garí, who has always followed the ancestral recipe inherited from his grandmother, Maria Nicolau, since Es Cruce was a roadside forge where melons and watermelons were sold "and about 20 lunches were served daily". Although that was 53 years ago.
But it should also be taken into account that snails are common on the menu: "In a normal week, Es Cruce cooks up to 1,000 kilos weekly. It is our star dish only behind black rice and ahead of pig's trotters, shoulder, escalope or suckling pig".
The majority of Es Cruce's snails (15% Moors) come from Andalusia and Morocco, and at the moment they are usually around 8 euros per kilo, a notable increase compared to the 5 euros per kilogram before the pandemic.