The “it food” of the summer fits neatly in the palm of your hand and comes in a can. Tinned fish, canned seafood, or conserva are terms for seafood and other edibles preserved in water or oil, sometimes with additional seasoning, often at the height of the product’s freshness. Popular all over the world but especially in the Mediterranean, tinned fish has swum out of the Continental pantry and into the global food world’s embrace.
Tinned fish began appearing in American restaurants in the early 2010s, capitalizing on a Euro-chic cachet that caught on as more Americans visited the conserva consumption hubs of Spain and Portugal. The pandemic took the trend into our homes, where scrappy TikTokers praised the shelf-stable product for adding a little luxury and wanderlust to our isolation-bound diets. Today, the tinned fish industry is projected to reach over $11.3 billion dollars by 2027.
Its appeal is manifold. The packaging is a design fan’s dream, from the old-school simplicity of Cento’s yellow cans to the delightfully absurdist illustrations of José Gourmet and beyond. Tinned fish is collectible, giftable, and affordable-ish relative to other luxury items. It’s a way of having a trendy moment without it becoming a deeply spendy moment, though buyer beware — stocking up on conserva can quickly become habit-forming.
Tinned seafood does have immaculate vibes, all the more appealing because it swims in contradictory waters where the accessible meets the aspirational. It’s a little grandpa chic, a little “girl dinner.” Eating out of a can has a “rat summer” ethos, but it also says “Why yes, I have walked the Camino!” It’s great for a solo dinner but can scale to feed a crowd. It can play co-star to charcuterie and cheese or shine on its own. The product is endlessly riff-able.
I first grew to appreciate this seafood delivery system not from TikTok or a trip to Barcelona, but right here in Pittsburgh at Tina’s Cocktail Bar and Bottle Shop, where owner Sarah Shaffer has hosted a food program prominently featuring tinned fish since 2020. Shaffer tells CP the major impetus for serving tinned fish was to match Tina’s biodynamic wine program, not just in flavor, but in philosophy.
“What was at the forefront of my reasoning for moving to tinned fish was sustainability. I want to be really clear, this is sustainability in terms of sustainable waste management. Tinned fish, in theory, is a way of shelf-stabilizing food, so you’re minimizing food waste. Its packaging can be first-person recycled, so we personally compost the boxes and we first-hand recycle the tins.”
Tina’s will be evolving their tinned fish offerings around August to further emphasize sustainability. “What you might see in the next few months is a much smaller offering of tinned fish,” says Shaffer, “but it’s going to be from canneries that are focusing on healthy farming, healthy collection of fish, and really understanding their impact on the environment around them … I want people to know that if they’re concerned about the current state of environmental stress, that’s something very important here at Tina’s. We’re interested in supporting the conscious consumers in our community.”
Shaffer mentions the encouragement of former staff member Elina Malkin as instrumental in bringing conserva to Tina’s. “She was a big part of the supporting factor that welcomed tinned fish into the program. It was with her I had my first can of tinned fish, and the entire concept grew from there,” says Shaffer. Initial reception from patrons, however, was mixed. Some approached with enthusiasm, and others, skepticism.
“Customers would come in and joke, ‘I don’t want to smell like sardines all night, so I can’t eat tinned fish.’ You’re not going to smell like sardines! It doesn’t smell like fish when you come into Tina’s, and there are more cracked cans of tinned fish here than in any place in the city!” But over 2022-2023, Shaffer began to see more excitement for the program, and now, “people are coming in with curiosity and respect, which always feels nice.”
If you’d like to dip your toe in the tinned fish waters, cans of conserva are available at many places in Pittsburgh, as well as online. Tina’s currently sells unopened conserva to customers, and will be expanding their retail offerings in the coming months as part of their online bottle shop. De Fer Coffee & Tea and Wholey’s in the Strip District offer curated conserva, but you can also find tinned seafood right where you think it’d be, in the canned sections of Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, or Giant Eagle.
Conserva that’s packaged with tomatoes, lemons, herbs, or other flavorings can also temper the fishiness, and smoked tinned fish is a great way to bridge the gap between a familiar flavor profile and an unknown product. I prefer tinned seafood served with something acidic to balance the preserving oil— think citrus, vinegar-based hot sauce, or pickled vegetables. Bread, crackers, or even lettuce wraps can serve as a carrier for your conserva; pair it with cheese and you have infinite bites to play with.
To level up your tinned fish game, you can plunk it on salad or toast, mix it into dips, toss into pasta for a pantry-staple dinner, have some tinned salmon with eggs like Shaffer does, or add shellfish to soups for extra protein. One of the more compelling recipes I’ve seen is for a “poor man’s Oysters Rockefeller” using smoked oysters covered in butter and cheese and broiled and eaten (carefully) right in the tin.
Hopefully, the trendiness of tinned fish, particularly in Pittsburgh, will transform into something with legs. As Shaffer says, “I think it’s important to identify what is trendy about it … It gives this energy of ‘I’ve been able to travel and I see tinned fish as a way to eat something high in protein, light on the stomach, you drink it with wine’ — it’s a lifestyle idea, if you will.
“Being someone who is blessed enough to be able to spend time in Europe, I will say that absolutely, tinned fish is a big part of cuisine there, but it’s not a glamorous thing, it’s not a trendy thing; it’s a way to feed a lot of Europeans with the renewable or accessible resource they have … Tinned fish is actually preserving fish at their peak and providing the highest quality of fish for the longest period.”
This article appears in Jul 17-23, 2024.
