Local producer SA CARAGOLERA

You’re invited to come and visit a very peculiar farm located in Binissalem: Sa Caragolera. The animals bred? Snails.

Miquel Àngel Salom is the farm’s young manager. The child of an entrepreneurial family, he set up his first company straight after graduating in Business Science. That’s how Sa Caragolera was born, in 2011. The chosen location: the Finca Es Botadors, which has been in the family for three generations.

Sa Caragolera is a farm for rearing, breeding and fattening snails for sale, as well as a restaurant which, naturally, specialises in snails.

It’s all based around the hothouse, which covers 1,500 square metres and which at first sight resembles just another hothouse of the kind to be the found all over Mallorca. Inside there is a series of well-arranged crates, where the snails, completely naturally, go to sleep during the day. At night, the snails come out to eat, moving around the plants in the hothouse and seeking refuge under their leaves, particularly the large cabbage leaves.

Everything happens at its own pace. Snails can take up to ten months to mature and become ready to be sold, but it all happens naturally, without ever forcing the process.

So when the snails have grown and their shell is fully strong, they are sold by order to restaurants and private customers, for which they are purged, cleaned and selected. There are two kinds available: the large snail and the medium-size snail, which are the most frequent kind cooked on the island.

The restaurant has recovered several traditional Mallorcan recipes for snails, but has also innovated with succulent dishes such as fried snails, snails with lobster and snails with sobrasada.

If all this has whet your appetite, or at least aroused your curiosity, be sure to sign up for a great experience by visiting the farm and trying its tasting menu. And if you’ve never tried snails before, do give them a chance.