Portuguese Canned Fish

Canning kept a lot of Portuguese coastal towns going from the late nineteenth century onward, and the habit stuck long after the industry shrank. Sardines, mackerel, tuna, octopus and cod roe are packed in olive oil, tomato or a chilli sauce, in factories that still lay the fish into the tin by hand in Matosinhos, Setubal, Olhao and the Azores. Good tins are eaten as they come, on bread with lemon, as a petisco with a beer, and the better sardines are deliberately aged in the can for a year or more, turned occasionally, the way a cellar treats wine. Visitors usually meet the trade through gift shops selling reproduction period packaging.

What you actually see

• The hand-packed tins - fish laid into the can by hand in the surviving factories.
• The sauces - olive oil, tomato, chilli, and cod roe in a tin of its own.
• Aged sardines - tins kept a year or more before they are opened.
• The cannery towns - Matosinhos, Setubal, Olhao, Portimao and the Azores.

When to go

Any time, since this is shelf-stable food. Sardines are fattest and best canned from summer into early autumn, which is also when fresh ones are grilled on every street. Factory shops and the cannery museums along the coast keep normal hours. Tins travel fine in hold luggage, though cabin liquid rules can catch them out.

Honest expectations

The souvenir shops built around vintage packaging charge several times the supermarket price for the same fish; the tins locals actually buy sit in any grocer for a couple of euros. Quality varies far more than the design suggests. And it is still oily tinned fish, which is not a universal pleasure however good the tin looks.

Nearby

The cannery towns run down the coast from Matosinhos in the north to Olhao in the Algarve.