An American staple making upscale inroad

Maiden Lane, a beer and wine bar on Manhattan’s East Village that opened in April, has no kitchen. But owners Gareth Maccubbin and Nialls Fallon still wanted to serve food.

“My partner Nialls and I were talking about alternative food ideas for the menu. After talking a lot about it we realized we both enjoy canned sardines at home,” said Maccubbin. “In our search to find the best sardines to put on the menu we came across all this other canned seafood primarily from Spain, Portugal and France.”

Along with Maiden Lane’s offerings of smoked and cured meats and cheeses, their discovery led to a separate canned seafood menu with multiple choices of canned sardines: in tomato sauce, olive oil, hot sauce and escabeche (marinated). Beyond sardines, their canned offerings include cod liver, octopus in olive oil, squid in ink, anchovies in olive oil, scallops in tomato sauce, marinated mussels and razor clams in brine.

As Maccubbin points out, putting cans on the menu is also low-risk. Unlike fresh fish, the cans can hang out on the shelf for a while. But apparently they haven’t been collecting dust.

“There’s a lot of interest in it,” he said. “I think at first, to a certain degree, as a novelty. But once you try these things they come back. It’s great drinking food.”

All menu items are eaten directly from the can, served on a cutting board with sides of parsley salad, bread, butter and salt.

Click here to read the full story that ran in the November issue of SeaFood Business >

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