Hu Tieu Go Ong Map restaurant highlighted for busy seafood and snail menu

Between a Pizza Hut and a laundromat, set well away from Footscray’s main eating strip, this tiny tuckshop goes through 100 kilograms of sea snails a week. Almost every table is crowded with diners eager for steaming bowls of mollusc-y comfort.

Some snails are cooked in fragrant satay, others in a sharp lemongrass broth or garlic-spiked coconut cream. All have a distinct meaty, salty chew once prised from their jumbo shells. There’s also golden-skinned grilled quail joined by the sour herbal sauce cham cheo, and char siu noodle soup loaded with pink pork slices and egg noodles.

The pandan leaf tea is free-flowing, and polite but prompt staff run food quickly to tables in the cosy, often crowded space. In a suburb packed with Vietnamese options, a queue out front is the highest form of praise. You won’t regret joining it.

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