WHEN I told colleagues what I’d eaten for lunch one day last week, it was greeted with screwed up faces and cries of “yuk”.

Snail caviar, they sneered, now why would you want to eat something like that?

A valid question, the answer to which was simple, I was curious.

That and the fact Gordon Jones, head chef at the Green House Hotel in Bournemouth, is very persuasive.

Gordon has procured the caviar from Dorset Escargot, a snail farm near Wimborne that supplies some of the country’s top restaurants with these Marmite molluscs (you either love them or hate them).

Using this unusual local produce, he’s rustled up an exciting dish called “snails in the forest,” which also includes veal bone marrow, slivers of beef, New Forest mushrooms and wild garlic.

“It’s something a bit different,” said Gordon, when he presented me with the dish last week.

No kidding. It looked like a scene from the uncultivated recesses of someone’s back garden.

That said, aesthetically I was impressed with the pearlescent pink and yellow caviar, and the snails look plump and juicy too – if only I liked them, I thought.

Gordon talked me through the other ingredients, which included mushroom powder, mushroom foam (which I found rather off putting) and the shin bone of a cow that has been soaked in coffee to resemble a piece of bark (purely for decoration).

“It’s a bit of a gimmick dish, but it does eat very well,” he said, as I picked up my fork.

“The best way to eat it is to mix it all up.”

It seemed like a shame to mess up this culinary masterpiece, but at the same time it made the idea of snails and snail caviar seem somewhat more palatable.

Although it turns out I actually quite liked the snail caviar and the way it pops in your mouth, releasing a subtly salty and mildly earthy flavour that goes perfectly with beef.

The Dorset snails, although some of the best I have tasted, still didn’t do an awful lot for me – while the roast veal marrow, beef and New Forest mushrooms were beautiful, especially with a peppering of the caviar on them.

“We’re the only restaurant in the country serving fresh snail caviar,” explains Gordon.

“If someone want something different, they will struggle to top snails in the forest.”

Quite.