Snakes on a plate

The top-selling pub dishes tend to remain fairly stable - it's a brave pub that takes sausage and mash or steak pie off the menu. But as consumers...

The top-selling pub dishes tend to remain fairly stable - it's a brave pub that takes sausage and mash or steak pie off the menu. But as consumers become better travelled and more cosmopolitan, there is an opportunity for pubs to be a little more adventurous.

Kangaroo, alligator, ostrich and even camel have all found their way onto pub menus, so my recent invitation to lunch at Vivat Bacchus, a wine bar in Farringdon, close to the City of London, shouldn't have come as too much of a surprise.

"Would you like to come along a try rattlesnake?" they asked me. Although I was very tempted to reply "thanks, but no fangs", to decline would clearly have been dereliction of my professional duty.

Rattlesnakes, so I'm told by Vivat Bacchus chef Robert Staegemann, come from the US in both farmed and wild varieties, but it would take a true reptile gourmet to spot the difference. Snake numbers need to be kept down in Arizona's national parks, so there are no conservation issues.

At around £60 a kilo, it is clearly not an everyday meat, and that translates to a starter-sized portion at the wine bar selling at £19.50.

However, with Vivat Bacchus attracting its fair share of high-spending City suits, there's been no shortage of takers.

My concerns about the etiquette of snake eating - what do you do about the fangs? Are you supposed to pick it up by the rattle in chicken drumstick style? - were unnecessary. The snake arrives at the restaurant vacuum-packed, with head and rattle removed.

Even so, by the time Robert has painstakingly removed the bone and sinew, there's a fair amount of wastage.

So how was it? Served with black-eye beans, lime crème fraîche and a smoked chilli jam, not bad. The flavour was a little gamey, with the texture of chicken, but not as distinctive as you might expect.

With no Cobra beer - the obvious accompaniment - on the menu I settled for a Peroni, which certainly helped to see me through.

While the snake was interesting, I have to admit that I enjoyed the next course far more.

A visit to one of Vivat Bacchus' two walk-in cheese rooms allowed me to assemble my own cheeseboard from a range of more than 80 varieties on offer.

I was also taken on a tour of the bar's wine cellar, which reflects its South African roots with more than 20,000 bottles and 1,000 labels representing the Cape's best winemakers.

Sadly, no aspi spumante, though.

Top 10 bar snakes

If you feel your pub food is lacking that all-important reptilian touch, try adding some of these to the menu: