Mention Vietnamese food and most people think of pho, papaya salad and spring or summer rolls — the stuff you can find at any Vietnamese restaurant here.

I like to seek out the tastes, sights and smells of the food I saw on the streets and in the countryside in Vietnam during a visit several years ago.

One dish that I’d seen but never actually tasted is bun oc, snail noodle soup. It’s almost impossible to find in restaurants here.

I asked my Vietnamese friends about it. Some second-generation friends had never had it. Others told me about so-and-so, who could make it for me, but didn’t know of a restaurant that served it.

Finally, I got a tip that Mai Lan, a hole-in-the-wall restaurant on Keeau­moku Street near the freeway overpass, has it on the menu.

Owner Sam Yu said it’s not popular, but he keeps bun oc on the menu because Vietnamese, Thai, Cambodian and Laotian customers seek it out.

“Some people you tell them ‘eat snails,’ ohh, they’re scared,” he said.

But Yu encouraged a sense of adventure in eating. “You eat pho, you eat won ton, eat something normal too much of the time. You have to try something new. Maybe after you try, you love it.”

The key to the dish is finding good snails and cleaning them well, he said. Instead of using the lake or river snails commonly found in Vietnam, Yu prepares his soup with sea snails.

He takes them out of the shell, scrubs them to remove the guts and stir-fries them in ginger, lemongrass, onion and other spices before adding pork-bone broth, chili, cilantro and more herbs.

Blood is added in some recipes, but not Yu’s. His bun oc is served with mint, lemon and bean sprouts.

In the shell, sea snails resemble land snails you’d find in your garden, but they are different. The meat tastes and has a texture similar to clams. It adds a seafood flavor to the broth, which has a nice balance of sweet and spicy flavors, with the mint adding a little coolness at the end. You can spice it up with Sriracha and shrimp paste.

The dish has a mix of textures, too, with the soft noodles, chewy snails and semicrunchy bean sprouts.

Bun oc, snail noodle soup, is not for everyone.

But if you like snails or are willing to try them, bun oc has more flavor and is a welcome change of pace from pho.

Web producer Craig Gima tries out new foods in a video and print series every other Wednesday. Dare him to try a really scary food: cgima@staradvertiser.com.