Pickled Wrinkles and Dulse: Gifts from the Sea

September 15, 2019

On a recent trip to Birch Harbor, Maine, my Aunt Rosemary took me to an eatery called the Pickled Wrinkle. (Don't worry, all will be explained.)

Coastal Maine can be a harsh place, and in winter (I imagine), downright brutal.... You'd have to work hard to wrest a life out of this landscape in the summer--and work even harder to store away enough food to survive the winter.

I grew up in upstate NY and never saw the ocean until I was in my twenties (crazy, right?) so it's been a delight for me to live near the Atlantic coast in New England, and learn about the gifts of the sea.

in a previous post, I ruminated on whether one could live strictly on foraged foods. You probably could (people have done it for thousands of years), but you’d have to spend most of your waking hours finding and preserving food. Most of us take the easy route of relying on the grocery store, and the old folkways are lost.

So I was thrilled to see them preserved in a restaurant in Birch Harbor, Maine, called “The Pickled Wrinkle.” No, that’s not a misspelling of “The Wrinkled Pickle.” ”Wrinkles“ (as the back of the menu explains) are a species of whelk, a large carnivorous snail.

Back in the old days when times were hard, fishing families would pickle the wrinkles for protein throughout the long icy winter.

As you can guess, I jumped at the chance to try one.

I probably should have rinsed my wrinkle before eating it--the straight-up taste of white vinegar was a little overwhelming, as was the somewhat muddy marine flavor that followed. But I loved it that this restaurant was giving us a glimpse into the past, and serving up foods harvested locally.

Also on the menu was fried Dulse. I actually rather liked the briny fulsomeness of this snack. Initially it has the texture of the photo negatives you used to get back from the drugstore when you had pictures developed. (Trust me, young folks, this is a “thing”—ask your parents.) But they remained crisp and did not become soggy in my mouth.

Fried Dulse may not put Doritos out of business, but I would probably choose them over rice cakes.

It will come as no surprise that this abundant wild edible is also a "superfood."

And, since we're on the topic of Maine, and foraging, and preserving food through the winter: Don't forget to pick up your Maine Wild Blueberry preserves. We all deserve a little sweetness, along with our practicality. Yum!