Q&A: Stephen Lucas

“EACH MORNING, OUR PRODUCERS CHOOSE THE VERY BEST FISH – THE ONES WITH FIRM FLESH, BRIGHT EYES, BRIGHT RED GILLS”

Interview: Mark Riddaway / Images: Patricia Niven

In 2018, when Stephen Lucas was approached by his friend Patrick Martinez with a business idea, his initial response was one of mild scepticism. “Patrick had rented a space in a market in Liverpool, where we lived, and we were discussing what to sell there. Being from Spain, he knew about tinned fish so knew it could be a gourmet product. Whereas I did not. I was like: ‘Tinned fish? Really?’”

A mouthful or two was all it took to turn Stephen’s world upside down. “As soon I tried the Pinhais spicy sardines, I completely changed my tune.” The Tinned Fish Market, which started on Merseyside with two suitcases of cans flown back from the Iberian Peninsula, is now headquartered in Bermondsey, the historic home of the British canning industry. Its beautiful Borough Market stand, run by Stephen, has become a magnet for lovers of tinned fish – and for other mild sceptics willing to be converted.

Tins from Spain and Portugal feature heavily, handmade in small batches using seasonal fish from the Algarve, the Azores and the Cantabrian Sea, but these have since been joined by products of a similarly stellar quality sourced from around Europe. The big-hitters of the tinned fish world – anchovies, sardines, tuna – are all available in a wide range of styles and flavours, alongside cans with contents of a more niche character, from Galician garfish and goose barnacles to Icelandic monkfish livers and Cornish squid.

In the UK, tinned fish doesn’t have the best of reputations. Why is that?

Most people here are only familiar with mass-produced tinned fish. You’ll find mass-produced stuff in Portugal and Spain too, but those countries also have this thriving culture of high-quality tinned fish. Our job is to explain what makes these products special, and why they cost more than those 60p supermarket tins. Each morning, our producers are choosing the very best fish – the ones with firm flesh, bright eyes, bright red gills, all those important markers. Over here, canning has tended to be a way of using up the fish that don’t meet those benchmarks.

Beyond preservation, what are the benefits of canning good fish?

There’s no clock ticking with tinned fish, so you can eat it whenever you want, but it’s much more than that. It’s about the flavours. Like wine, they really do get better with time, becoming richer and more complex. At Pinhais, a cannery in Portugal, they mature their sardines for six months before they’re even released. They’ll continue to improve in your cupboard. You just need to make sure you turn the cans from time to time so that the fish are regularly coated in oil.

How old are the canneries you work with?

The oldest has been around since 1857. Quite a few have been around for at least 100 years. Salvatore Orlando of Olasagasti was one of the pioneers – he came to Spain from Sicily in the late 19th century, bringing with him a salting technique that worked perfectly with the amazing anchovies from the Cantabrian Sea. There are new canneries as well, particularly in the Algarve. Papa Anzóis is one. They told me that the last thing Portugal needs is more sardines in olive oil, so they’ve done something new: they’re dehydrating the fish first, which means they absorb more oil and become even juicier. They still use some of those 100-year-old techniques, but they’re melding them with new ideas.

You source from canneries all over Europe. What characteristic do they have in common?

They only use high-quality ingredients – the fish, but also the oil and flavourings – and they still work by hand. There came a point in history when it became much cheaper to mechanise everything, but these canneries have stubbornly kept to the artisanal techniques. You see them in the factories beheading and gutting the fish in a single movement – it’s so fast, it looks like sleight of hand. The fish are also placed in the tins by hand. They can cut them in a way that minimises waste, and it looks so beautiful when you open the tins, all carefully arranged.

Are we starting to see a revival of artisanal canning in Britain?

We are. One nice story is Hevva! – a new Cornish cannery. When they were getting started, they came to us asking for tips on what would do well in the British market, and we gave them some advice on their products and packaging. Theirs are now some of the most popular cans on our stand. And some of the most luxurious tins that we have are from Exmoor Caviar in Devon – so yes, it’s definitely happening here now.

What are your suppliers doing to protect the oceans?

Our canneries work at a small scale using sustainable fishing practices such as pole-and-line fishing and ‘purse seine’, a type of net that allows smaller fish to escape. They fish seasonally to avoid overfishing. Tinned fish is like a little time capsule – you can eat seasonally all year round. The albacore tuna is only fished for four months over the summer. Anchovies are caught in the spring. Striped red mullet is caught for a single month in late summer. Sardines are fished from May to November, and if the quota’s met before that November cut-off, then the boats have to stop. It’s all entirely traceable: we get a catch certificate which says where they’re caught, which boat caught them, the weight of the catch. If somebody wanted to know where the contents of a can came from and when, we’d be able to find that out – every single can.

One thing that’s immediately obvious to anyone visiting your stand is the quality of the graphic art on the cans. How big a draw is that?

It’s funny the number of people who stop by for that reason. We get graphic designers dropping by just to look at the tins. We even get vegans coming in to appreciate the art! Some of the artwork has real heritage – the Berthe design, with the little girl, that’s from 1906. Others are modern – the amazing Papa Anzóis branding, for example, with its bright pops of colour. Those designs draw people in. Their look is what’s so arresting when you pass our stand, and maybe what persuades people to buy them initially. After that, though, it’s more about the flavour and less about the aesthetics.

How close is your relationship with the canneries you buy from?

A lot of them have been on a real journey with us over the past six years and we’ve got to know them really well. Pinhais has been with us right from the start. We’ve been with Olasagasti a long time. Don Reinaldo, too – they’re just five people working in a tiny cannery in Galicia. I remember when some of their tins were featured on the Sorted Food channel on YouTube. Their videos have huge reach in the UK, and suddenly everyone here knew about this tiny Spanish cannery. People were flooding to our store wanting monkfish livers. The cannery had to do a whole extra batch just for us because it was so popular! They were so excited. It was lovely to see.