Food World Restaurant

There's a Fujianese talent to eating periwinkles — capture a single shell with chopsticks, hold it to the lips, gently extract the snail meat, separate the callous-like operculum, and use chopsticks to set both shell and operculum on a side plate — that I haven't acquired. As at Prima, where, I believe, the periwinkles are simply poached, I relied on toothpicks to twist free the meat. Since I mimicked another table and ordered "any style with snail" ($9.95) slathered in black bean sauce, at Food World I needed not only multiple toothpicks but many napkins, too.

Food World Restaurant
19 Eldridge St. (Canal-Division Sts.), Manhattan
212-219-0006