u/DreweyD

Not an exotic can, but a seemingly rare one, at least in my neck-o-the-woods. I’ve not really been seeing this variety or the jalapeño or Mediterranean ones, on shelves in Central Virginia or Brooklyn lately. When I spotted just this one tin all by its lonesome at a Food Lion near my office this morning, I may have squeaked gleefully a bit more loudly than is considered dignified for a gentleman of my years. Squee!

Note the Best By date: August ‘27. Cans currently on sale at retailers now are generally gonna have ‘29 or ‘30 dates. Where had this fella been over the last couple of years? But the tin looked perfectly fine, and the mackerel was its normal chunky solid self. Made for a great lunch of tiny open-faced guacamole sandwiches.

A birthday present to meself, these tins of Mediterranean parrotfish (Sparisoma cretense) arrived a couple of months late. So late that I’d forgotten them, which turned them into a surprise gift from me to me. Ta-da!

Not a fish I’ve ever had, fresh or from a can. Saw Tinned Fish Tyler crack one open, and it sounded nice. But then I made the mistake of looking at a lot of pictures of the fish in its reefy home country, and now I’m feeling bad. Too late to set them free, though, I suppose.

Both new to me, both from Spain, both start with Z—I had to side-by-side ‘em. They’re also both pilchard sardines, but here ZOE is offering up their “Diva Select” baby sardines.

Zona poured organic extra virgin olive oil over the pilchards, while the ZOE sardinillas have to make do with plain old olive oil. That’s a bit disappointing to me, considering that my only prior experience with ZOE as a company is their Diva Select Arbequina Extra Virgin Olive Oil, which I’ve run through several bottles of and which is freaking spectacular. (The brand’s website states these baby sardines are bathed in their regular ZOE Extra Virgin Olive Oil, but the can makes no such claim—I don’t know which story to believe.) In any case, both tins’ olive oils looked, smelled, and tasted just dandy. They were also quite similar in my decidedly non-expert opinion.

The core first impression left by the Zona can is: Scales, scales, and more scales. The inside of the lid was tiled with them. The three big pilchards had barely been scaled at all. Meanwhile over in the baby pool, ZOE hadn’t quite finished prepping the small fry either. I’m struggling to remember a prior tin of sardinillas with as much scale-age. They’re smaller scales, sure, but it’s weird to encounter them at all with babies like these—extra little, with a dozen fish in this 4 ounce can.

The Zona big boys were pretty much standard-issue Spanish sardines. Tender, but not squishy. Appropriately salted. The classic taste of true sardines we know and love. If they’d been prepped as well as they’ve been cooked, I’d give them two thumbs up. If you couldn’t care less about scales—hell, maybe you love ‘em—you’ll be happy with these if you run across them in your wanderings.

The ZOE toddlers are fun, like sardinillas are always fun. Relatively solid—they might look like similarly-sized brisling sprats, but these are substantially more firm, with a very nice bite. Although I was disappointed to be confronted by scales in a can of little guys, it wasn’t enough to put me off of these. If you enjoy sardinillas and you spot these for a price you can live with, I think you’ll like them.

These are the same, right? I mean, the José Gourmet sardinillas are just in extra virgin olive oil, while the Maria Organic fish luxuriate in organic extra virgin olive oil, but really, they’re the same. Right?

José Gourmet and Maria Organic are corporate family members. Maria Organic is their line that relies exclusively on organic oils and other ingredients that end up in cans with their seafood. These fish were fished in the same fishery, processed on the same day or close to it—the cans share a December 31, 2027 “best by” date—in the same place. So, same-o, same-o.

Well, I know one way to find out: Science that shit! And because I shoulder burdens so you don’t have to, I resigned myself to snorfling down two luxury tins of Portugal’s finest baby sardines for lunch today. No, no, don’t thank me—I’m just gratified to be of service.

Anyway, wonders never do be ceasing. No sooner had I pried off the lids when obvious differences appeared. The Maria Organic sardines look as though they’ve been smoked. They’ve not been smoked. The José Gourmet fish were noticeably larger, too. I realize these are natural—wild caught, they always shout—products, but they seemed a lot beefier. I measured the oil drained from each can, and there was 25% less in the José Gourmet—in other words, the Maria Organic fish had that much extra elbow room in their more-loosely-packed tin.

The aromas differed, as well. I’d describe the José Gourmet as having the classic Portuguese/Spanish scent. Oceany, briny, fishy-in-a-good-way. The Maria Organic had something in addition, some earthy, dark notes. I turned back to the ingredient list on the box, and then I fired up the machine and went to their site, because I thought there must be herbs-n-spices I hadn’t cottoned to. Nope, just salt and oil in both cans. I’m not an olive oil expert by any stretch, but I suppose the different oils are the most likely explanation, with the organic extra virgin olive oil being darker, conveying grassy/herbaceous scents. Not something I’d encountered in unsmoked sardines before.

Both of these were superb. I didn’t even notice I was charging through two cans, when most days I am content to have just one. But if I have both of these on the shelf, and I’m reaching for one to offer a curious newcomer, I’ll grab the José Gourmet and leave the Maria Organic for a more seasoned veteran. Or for me, most likely. It’s just a slightly more challenging, puzzling even, experience waiting in that tin.

Side Note on Nutrition Facts: Unless you truly have inside, expert knowledge, don’t dig in. I’ve no explanation for the curious differences here. There are always curious differences. I’ve corresponded over some years with the (perfectly nice) folks at 100Mistérios, the parent company that produces both these cans, and the nutrition and ingredient questions have been posed and yet never squarely answered. It’s fine. They’re close enough, literally, for government purposes.

Dino wrapped tuna! What’s not to love?

Naval offers such a wide variety of tuna preparations. Here the label tells you that “couve toscana” is twirled around the steaks. You’ll see some sites render that in English as “Tuscan cabbage,” but it’s actually Tuscan kale (Brassica oleracea), which I’ve grown and which I know as Dinosaur kale. ‘Cause the leaves are huge and scary!

Naval ain’t messing around neither. We here are well-aware that when a sardine label mentions peppers, bay leaves, carrots, there will be very little of such in the can. Pickles? We can usually read the newspaper through the ultra-thin slices. Here the can promises that the tuna is “enrolados,” meaning tangled, coiled, rolled up, and that promise is fulfilled. The two hefty steaks in the tin I opened for lunch today were each swaddled in a big old leaf of dark, glossy kale.

I really like greens, and the bitter flavor notes are what draw me. (I like the mustard and collard end of the spectrum, with sweeter spinach my least favorite.) The distinctive taste of Dino leaves made it through the rigors of canning and really contributed to the overall impact of this tin. Dependably fine tuna from Naval, and here it’s shown off nicely by this presentation. Fun and different.

Although I’d seen the brand here before, I’d not previously had their products on my shelf. I ordered several different of their offerings, sardines and mackerel, and this is the first I’ve opened.

On the plus side of the ledger: First, it’s a UK company, and I do like to see the Brits working to build (back) up all aspects of tinned seafood business. Second, they’ve a very substantial emphasis on green and sustainable products. Certified organic olive oil and produce—here it’s lemons—really makes things more difficult and expensive on the producer, but to me that’s good long-term business.

On the other side of the balance: Underwhelming processing. Plenty of giblets; plenty of scales. No real lemon presence, even though a slice of lemon is present. This is almost always the case in lemon cans, so I don’t really blame Fish4Ever—it’s apparently very, very difficult to get citrusy goodness safely through the rigors of canning.

How was the dang fish already?? Jeez, hold your horses. The four good-sized pilchards were fine. A partner in Portugal cans these for Fish4Ever. (Actually, I understand they work with a number of canneries in both Portugal and Spain to produce their sardine and mackerel tins.) This can was exactly what you’d expect from a basic, middle of the road Portuguese pilchard, good and beefy; firm, but not albacore tuna-firm; good fishy, not bad fishy; appropriately salted; attractively presented in the tin and on the plate.

Really my only strong reservation is to the scales. I’ve essentially loud-quit scaly sardines, especially somewhat pricy ones. This can ran me just under $10. You might be able to scrounge them up for less than that in the States, but not much less. (Meanwhile, I’ve been able sometimes to smuggle in cans from Sea Sisters, another UK outfit, for about $14 each, and those have been flawless and spectacular.) For $10, I require more careful, thorough prepping at the factory. Down at the $3 and $4 end of the market, I’ll suck it up and swipe off the scales, I guess, but not in the neighborhood Fish4Ever is hanging out in. But that’s just me—you jabronis decide what lines you want to draw.

I’ve previously voiced my reservations about Shelf Break, both its products and its marketing practices. A recent review of the coho with kelp chili crisp prompted an extraordinary number of private messages from highly exercised advocates of the company and the fish. Is Shelf Break a cult, I started to wonder.

Still, that recent taste-test was an apples-to-oranges affair, because I had no other kelp chili crisp tin to compare. I circled back to my favorite fishmonger, Tuckahoe Seafood, yesterday, and picked up the plain smoked coho.

I’m sorry—still not a fan. Indeed, I liked the plain presentation even less. Opening the lid the kitchen filled with a smoky scent that was sooty, a campfire smell, not a meat smokehouse smell. The aroma is forceful, which surprised me, since the appearance of the salmon suggests a light smoking. The pieces in this one can were, as you can see, pretty slender slices—five cuts instead of the three in other cohos I’ve opened in recent months.

Once I’d turned the fish out onto the plate, I worked to prise the pieces apart. They didn’t yield easily. There was something odd about the skin, sticky and a bit slimy. Or perhaps gummy is a better word. Whichever, it spackled the different bits together pretty well. Whatever happened to the skin in the smoking also left much of ot a dull putty color. Overall, unsettling and not the thing of beauty I regularly enjoy gandering at when I tuck into other smoked salmon.

“Maybe the skin’s like that,” I thought to myself, “because the fish was only lightly smoked, so it’ll be real tender.” Nope, not tender, not juicy. Tough, like tuna, rather than jerky-tough like heavily-smoked salmon. I’d planned, in the interest of science, to eat the fish without any additions or distractions. I found i could not. I toasted some sourdough and slathered on some crème fraîche.

The taste of the salmon was dominated by the sooty smoke, but there’s also a secondary note that’s metallic, like you get sometimes holding a couple of nails with your lips while you’re hammering a row. The ingredient list says there’s brown sugar, garlic, and black pepper in the mix. I got no real sweetness, nor garlicky notes, but a light pepperiness is in background. The lack of sweetness made me do a double-take. Back to the label I went. And then I went to every other smoked salmon in the larder. “Perhaps Shelf Break just uses much less sugar,” I thought. Not the case—all of them said things like “under 1 mg” or words to that extent, and that includes varieties of Wildfish salmon that all taste like amazing candy.

After I’d polished off the can—yup, I’m a thorough scientist—I immediately opened a tin of Bumblebee Smoke Flavored Coho Salmon. Smoke flavored. $3.24. No sugar at all, so a different sort of targeting by Bumblebee. It was a superior experience, a more pleasant smoke, albeit phony-baloney, more tender coho, and somehow sweeter than the Shelf Break. Did I mention it cost ten bucks less?

So all the Shelf (Ball)Breakers out there can gnash their teeth and cry out all they wish. I’m not going to reach for further cans in future.

Searching online for the Zona sardines, which I see folks reviewing online, but which I’ve never spotted in the wilds, I happened upon a seller in Lyndhurst, NJ, SuperMarketItaly. Plenty of nice things on offer, including the sardinillas from Zoe, a brand I’d never heard tell of before. Anyway, nice folks to do business with, everything arrived promptly and in good shape.

I realize that u/Safe_Challenge_18 will be dismayed to see even more of these Sanniti mussels, both the garlic butter and the chili oil cans, plus the mackerel in lemon oil and crushed red pepper, since the appearance of just a single Sanniti from a surprise package on my front porch in the States was a challenge to the poor devil’s sanity, because these products of Denmark don’t appear on shelves in Safe Challenge’s homeland. I can only apologize for the oddities of late stage capitalism. Sorry.

I wasn’t aware of this garfish (Belone belone) offering from Briosa until recently. The English language marketing copy regularly emphasizes that these are “small garfish.” Well, I already like garfish. A lot. But littler is always better-er, right? I was super psyched to tuck into some baby needles.

Let me be clear: These are good. The garfish are good. The oil is fine. The single pepper has fought valiantly to bestow a hint of spice to that oil. It’s a good tin.

That said, these were just normal-sized garfish. Five in this can, and there are always 4 or 5 in 120 gram sardine-cans like this. I’d anticipated more, like 8 or 10 fun-sized guys. Oh well.

In the normal world of garfish these run a somewhat distant second to the Ati Manel can in the spiced oil sweepstakes. To my knowledge—and Lord knows I could be way wrong, since, for Pity’s sake, I only cottoned onto Briosa’s entry in recent weeks—it’s just these two contestants. (I’m DQing the entry from Comur, because they’re not good and are crazy expensive.)

Pitted against all garfish, plain and spiced, on the market, Briosa falls out of the running, I think. The Ati Manel spiced, the Ati Manel plain, and Ramón Peña are on the podium, and others, including Paco Lafuente, Real Conserva, José Gourmet, and Mariscadora finish in the running ahead of Briosa. (Honorable Mention awarded to Mariscadora for its canning of garfish in escabeche sauce—well worth trying for garfish fans.)

What dropped this tin from front-runner contention? As compared to other producers’ offerings, the fish here was overly tough. Garfish are already firm little guys, and I actually view that solid bite as a feature, not a flaw, setting the species apart from sardines and mackerel. Briosa’s processing, though, left these babies as challenging to chew as the most unyielding canned tuna. If I had additional cans, I’d hide them away for four or five years to see what work the oil might be able to accomplish. The aroma from the can, and the taste in the mouth, were also more strongly fishy than any other tinned garfish I’ve sampled before. The scent and taste were not offensive, just strong and heading generally in the direction of unpleasant.

To recap: Not a championship can of garfish, but still a good one. The distance between great sardines, good sardines, meh sardines, and dreadful sardines is huge. With garfish the contenders are bunched much more closely coming into the final corner in the race. Briosa falls behind the pack, but not way behind.

These babies were left in a basket—well, a gift bag—on the doorstep by a neighbor, accompanied by a text message that let me know they’d received them as a gift, didn’t really fancy them, but understood I did. Yahtzee!

Portugal Vineyards, in Porto, Portugal, is one of the few—vanishingly few—EU retailers standing ready, willing, and able to ship to the States while tariff storms rage. Here I ordered some things I already know and love, including each of the sardines and many of the tuna cans. But other selections are totally new to me. There are two salmons from Georgette I’ve never heard of before. There are tiny garfish from Briosa—how tiny will they be?? On a flyer I went ahead and tripled down on the pickled eel from Nazarena —hope I can abide it. Naval has one can of tuna fillets wrapped in cabbage and another paired with ham. Anyway, this ought to keep me off the streets a while.

Another in a series of “Tinned River Fish” from Portuguese cannery Bem Amanhado, imported into the States by Lata. Here they present brown trout (Salmo trutta) from mountain streams in Portugal’s interior. Unlike some of the new-to-me species they’re offering, brown trout is familiar to me. Still, the can offers some surprises.

First off, I’d expected a large filet, as I’ve grown accustomed to from Cole’s, José Gourmet, and others who bring us canned trout. I also looked forward to the sight of lovely, speckled trout skin. Wrong and wrong. The can, as you can see, contains bits and pieces, all skinless and nearly—but not entirely—boneless. (Totally crumbly bones—no problems.)

I was lead down a somewhat wrong path by the description of the trout as being braised. For starters, there’s no liquid mentioned on the label other than extra virgin olive oil. No wine, stock, or water. Braised how, exactly, hmmm. And related to that, I’d expected—hoped—to see some evidence of a quick sear of the fish, but nope, no browning.

Finally, whatever the cooking looked like, there were tasty things in the mix—onions, garlic, parsley, but also juniper berries, at least one of which you can espy in the snapshot. If you ever had the Gin & Tonic mackerel from Gold Seal, you get a mild hint of that piney, resinous flavor juniper brings to the party. Trout is so mild, and I think dressing it up with herbs-n-spices is always a good move.

How was the dang fish already? All right, I’m getting to it. The trout was tender, flaked nicely. Broken pieces, yes, but many of good fork-size. I did miss the pretty picture of a big filet, but I didn’t hate this presentation. The taste was trout-mild, no huge surprises, but again the fish was well-complemented here by the veggies in the “braise.” All I did on the plate was squeeze a half a lemon and crank a bit of black pepper. I’d pondered different meal options, but I ended up having it, and enjoying it, all on its lonesome.

These are a very rare bird: boneless, but skin on pilchard sardines in tomato sauce. If another producer is offering that combo, I’m failing completely to recall it. Perhaps younger folks with better memories will shine light here for us. For now, though, these stand alone, which puts them at the top of their class. They’re also scarce as hen’s teeth on American shores. I ordered them direct from Penzance, England, where The Pilchard Works has its operation in Cornwall.

Fortunately, these pretty little fillets and the sauce they’re lain in are also delicious. The cans are slender, just 95 grams, and the fillets pack so flat, which leaves space for only a small amount of that sauce—more than enough for my toast, but not sufficient on its own to complete a bowl of pasta. What sauce there is, though, is savory and nice, an actual marinara, instead of the bare tomato paste one often encounters in “tomato sauce” tins of seafood.

Quite a relief that these turned out to be swell, I’ll tell ya, since I gambled on a 14-pack for $64.64. 14-pack?? The metric baker’s dozen, I guess. The price included applicable tariffs, so no surprise at time of delivery, as I’ve dismayingly experienced with a number of other recent deliveries from overseas. With shipping from the UK, these cans worked out to be $6.22 each, which struck me as fair, given the quality and, again, the scarcity.

A note about boneless, but skin on sardines. I collect these—the ones in olive oil from Berthe are quite good and broadly available—to offer to folks who are fish-curious, but for whom the bones are a high psychological hurdle. Leaving the skin on retains the slender layer of fat below that is key to flavor. Deboning also results in fully-complete cleaning of the fillets—no surprise niblets or giblets, another plus for newcomers.

Italiamo is Lidl’s in-house brand for Italian specialty goods. I’ve been broadly pleased with the line’s offerings in the past. This jar is produced in Spain, but whatever. I generally enjoy jarred tuna from lots of different outfits. They’re super handy to keep on hand for office lunches.

And twisted the top I did at me desk. Instantly the very strong fishy aroma filled the room and crept well out into the hallway. I cannot recall opening a stronger smelling can or jar before in my building. Sorry, colleagues.

I had heated leftover pasta and marinara sauce in the microwave, and I tipped about half the jar over it. The warmth at least doubled the powerful ocean scent. Really, really sorry, team.

The label says “albacore,” but the tuna in the jar is mighty dark. Which is weird, since albacore is rather famously white-fleshed (alba = white). I don’t know quite what’s going on in this can. It didn’t taste off or spoiled, but it definitely had a funky, fishing pier quality. I ate my bowl of pasta. I would not dig into seconds with gusto. And I did not save the second half of the jar for later.

All canneries have their particular idiosyncrasies, the features that make them stand out in your memory. The most striking thing about Santo Amaro, for me, is that its tuna offerings are consistently good, but its sardines are just as consistently crummy. How do they maintain both streaks side-by-side?

Luckily, today’s lunch featured their skipjack tuna (Katsuwonus pelamis) in olive oil and piri piri chili peppers. For those counting, there were three of those tiny peppers, and they’d leant what I cipher to be zero Scoville units of heat. Which is fine—I wasn’t looking for a spicy punch today.

The skipjack steaks were, as they always are, beefy little blocks. They have a good bite, but they’re fork tender and do flake apart a bit. I find them ideal on salads. They are not wildly dissimilar to cans marketed by Santa Catarina and Tenorio, both of which I also favor.

If you’re a fretting fretter about mercury in tuna, Santo Amaro is a friend. They make it easy to check the test results on the lot your can came from. And skipjack, by its nature, is already a good tuna choice if heavy metals keep you up at night.

I’ve had pull tabs break, but I’d not had one snap away and cut me. (Not photographed—you’re welcome.) I reached for my preferred side-cut can opener, which has always worked just fine with sharp-shouldered cans like this. For whatever reason, though, it took the left turns like Kenny Shrader at Homestead and just boogered up the lid. Called on old-school backup, which got the job done, but the lid ended up a dangerous, chaotic mess. But I was extra cautious and didn’t cut myself again. Nope, I lied—sliced the other pointer finger. Doh!

Yes, these are expensive. And yes, they are devilishly hard to get hold of, because production is so limited. Worth the price and the struggle? Most definitely (I’m sorry to say).

I’ve had various fish cheeks in the past. The hake cheeks, both in olive oil and in salsa verde, from Alalunga are likewise pricy, but pretty widely available. Güeyu Mar offers high-dollar hake cheeks chargrilled. Wildfish itself sometimes presents fried king salmon cheeks. None of these have turned me into a repeat customer. They each fell instead into the category of curiosities. Glad I visited; no need to go back again.

These black cod cheeks are different. I gave the can a bath in just-boiled water, three minutes. And when I cracked the lid the kitchen was instantly filled with the aroma of delicious fish. “Duh,” I hear you saying, “it’s fish.” What I mean, though, is it smelled just like a plate of freshly-cooked fish had been delivered to my table at a very good seafood restaurant. I can’t recall anything like it before.

I love canned fish. I eat something from a tin almost every day, and I have done for decades. I also love fresh fish, especially if it’s expertly prepared and brought to me by friendly waiters. But make no mistake: canned and fresh are distinctly different experiences. The double-cooking, especially the high heat and pressure of the final sterilizing treatment of just-sealed cans, turns tinned fish into something different. Not worse, not lesser—in my opinion—but definitely different.

These damn expensive, nearly unobtainable cheeks though. They’re substantial, fatty and tender, but with a good meaty chew. That already sets them apart from the hake and salmon cheeks I’ve had before. And the flavor and aroma on the plate are fully fresh. How Wildfish delivers that through the gauntlet of canning is a dark mystery. Black magic with black cod.

Butter is part of the trick, I expect. Here it’s cultured butter, meaning the milk was partially fermented, in the French manner, before churning. That culturation lends tangy, nutty notes to the churn. Those elements aren’t front and center here, more in background, but they add depth and richness that sweet cream butter wouldn’t have, I suspect. Butter is always the chef’s best secret; cultured butter is a chef’s dark sorcery.

I have one can left on the shelf. It’s sitting by its lonesome among hundreds of other tins, but it’s now the one I’m going to be fretting about most. Do I save it? Can I? Do I slate it for some special event? Must I share it? Must I??

I dunked pretty hard on Shelf Break’s pink salmon recently, so when I spotted their newest offering, this coho with kelp chili crisp, on the shelf at Tuckahoe Seafood, the earth’s finest fishmonger, I picked up a can. I know not all of you can go on pilgrimage to Richmond, Virginia, but these tins seem to be appearing likewise around the U.S. for around $13.00 apiece.

As a general rule, I enjoy coho more—way more, really—than pink salmon. I’ve heard some people, speaking to these two species, complain that the coho is too fatty. Those people appear to me to be dangerously insane. With salmon, at least, there is no such thing as too fatty. Anyway, I reached for the only coho I had in current inventory, the smoked from Sena Sea, to do some sort of apples-to-oranges comparison, at least. It’s wild-caught coho in both cans.

This particular Shelf Break coho is unsmoked, best I know. They do offer a smoked version, sans chili crisp, but I’ve not had me mitts on that can. Here the coho arrived lightly adorned with chili crisp. I say “lightly” because it’s just a small dollop in the tin, as contrasted with the volume of Fly by Jing the Fishwife smoked, farmed Atlantic salmon is packed with.

I do wish that Shelf Break had presented this can with smoked coho. I think smoking would’ve showcased the salmon better. Here in the real world, where my wishes count for little, that salmon was a bit flimsy. If I’d slapped on a fez and administered the squish test—I did, just not on film—you’d’ve seen a very yielding squash.

Regardless of other comments, simply having a wild-caught coho presented with this chili crisp is a damn delight. I had both the salmons on sourdough toast with crème fraîche, and the chili crisp played so nicely.

Now the Sena Sea coho is smoked, although not heavily, so a texture comparison is not entirely fair. Producers are perfectly entitled to bring to market the products they wish to offer the world, and unsmoked is Shelf Break’s prerogative. That said, the Sena Sea coho is firm, juicy, flaky, smoky-sweet, and it, too, was mighty nice in combination with good toast and crème fraîche. Happy breakfast for me! But still, Shelf Break: Do it smoked next year!

What to conclude? Well, if you’re a kelp chili crisp fan, get you some Shelf Break. If you love coho, but not smoked coho, you too might should give it a try—quick, before they act on my advice! This coho, to be clear, is a good step up from their pink salmon. As for me, though, I’ll most likely keep the Sena Sea in stock, next door neighbors with the Fishwife Fly by Jing in me larder.

This is the last of a stack of an assortment of Siesta cans I spotted on local shelves. I feel like I really gave the company the ol’ college try, but my spirit has been broken.

Product of Spain. Big honking pilchards. Organic extra virgin olive oil. Appealing graphic design. These have so much going for them. But good things did not happen to these fish in the cannery.

This morning I cracked into the third of three cans of these sardines. Each fish arrived fully-armored in the scales the good Lord gave it. The aroma from all three cans, which I opened across a period of weeks, was strong and not fresh. Odd niblets and giblets swirled around in the oil with the pilchards.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that I’ve eaten tens of thousands of canned sardines over decades of dining. I have a shelf of textbooks on fish anatomy. I’m a curious fellow who spends far, far too much time crashing around the interWebs (trying) to learn more. Yet I cannot recall previously encountering some of the strange bits presented here, either in cans or in an academic setting.

I don’t often engage in, much less photograph, dissections, but I had to do some investigating. What, for instance, are those small capsules at noon and 8 o’clock in the picture of my plate? They’re close to the size and shape of a .22 short cartridge, if that helps anyone with scale. I’ve got no clue.

The powerful funk from the tin, I confirmed, was down to the stomach contents of these fish. They et something really spicy, I guess, for their final suppers. If they’d been properly cleaned at the cannery, perhaps these cans could’ve been saved. I only say “perhaps,” though, because the sardines were also oddly squishy and tough at the same time. Dunno how that Goldilocks situation is achieved in one fish, but it was the same with all nine pilchards spread across three tins.

Did I actually eat all of them, I hear you asking. Yes, I did. For science! Did heavy shots of hot sauce eventually come into play? You betcha, and lemon juice. Was there anything enjoyable about these cans? Not really—the fish weren’t even pretty to look at. But, you ask finally, were these at least affordable? Nope, I paid $11.99 apiece at a local shop, and Siesta peddles three packs at its site for $25.95 plus shipping.

Variety being the spice, and all, my general habit is to look for new and different. Looking back over the last several years, though, the two cans I have reached for most often are the POW! Habanero Sardines from Rainbow Tomatoes Garden and the Mackerel Fillets with Ginger and Chili Peppers from Angelo Parodi. I get itchy when I see their corner of the cupboard with only short stacks. I got a plain brown package from my dealer yesterday, so I’m good now, for a little while anyway.

This ginormous (1.65 pounds!) tin of skipjack tuna in sunflower oil is on shelves at Lidl stores in the U.S. for a short time. It ciphers out to 30 cents an ounce, and I am no longer seeing much tuna on shelves near me for under 40 cents an ounce nowadays. I’ve been more than satisfied with sardines, herring, tuna, and salmon being peddled under the Nixe brand, so I expect this offering to be of similar quality. Knowing I’ve got some large family gatherings on the calendar this summer, I grabbed several of these for tuna-salad-for-a-crowd and other dishes.