At the beginning of the year, we spent a week in Lisbon to recover from the Christmas and New Year stress, simply to get a change of scenery... and if possible, discover some great new tinned fish for the shop!
And so, we immediately visited the Conserveira de Lisboa, some products of which we already have in our range. The Conserveira de Lisboa was founded in 1930, and the shop has hardly changed since those days. The shop is tiny; when five customers are inside, it is full, and you feel like a sardine in a tin. Old wooden shelves on the walls display the tins, and a wide wooden counter with a huge, beautiful, and worn cash register separates the customers from the shop assistants. In a corner, an employee sits and wraps the plain-looking tins in beautiful wrapping paper with the memorable logo. One employee can pack about 600 tins a day. Selma Santos, who takes care of exports, took a lot of time for us and recommended some new fish specialties, such as sardine eggs.
Sardines are omnipresent in Lisbon. Whether in a tin, fresh on the grill, as graffiti on a wall, or on all kinds of souvenirs, you are reminded of them everywhere. Next time, we will fly to Lisbon in June, when on June 12, on the eve of the Saint Anthony holiday, the start of the sardine season is celebrated, and the whole city is on its feet, celebrating, and eating grilled sardines!
Speaking of food: We ate a lot of fish, but we enjoyed the little sweet delicacies - such as the Pastéis de Nata - almost even more, which you can find on every corner in one of the countless pastelarias (bakeries). It is a good thing we spent almost the entire time on foot and walked up and down many, many stairs, so we at least thoroughly earned it!
An absolute highlight for us was also the visit to Sol e Pesca, a place located in a former fishing tackle shop, where you can eat almost exclusively tinned fish. On small, somewhat rickety flea market furniture, you can eat the fish you previously selected from a display case full of tins, surrounded by fishing rods, nets, fish posters, and fishing hooks. There are sardines, mackerel, bacalhau, tuna, squid, and octopus in many different varieties. The tin is opened, the fish is placed on a plate with some olive oil and fresh herbs, and it is served with bread and a nice Vinho Verde. Delicious!
There we discovered the St. Catarina tuna, which we have also been selling in our shop since yesterday, and of course online as well.
We met Tiago from Miss Can. Tiago, his twin sister Barbara, and Marta, a friend of the two, recently founded the company Miss Can and have since been selling sardines, mackerel & bacalhau in a modern guise. The contents, however, are traditional tinned fish. The three from Miss Can were looking for the taste of their childhood, because they all have sardines in their genes: Tiago and Barbara's grandfather owned two tinned fish factories, and Marta's great-grandfather was the wholesaler for the first Portuguese fish factory. After visiting seven canning factories, they found one in northern Portugal that prepared the fish just as they knew it. Soon, Miss Can's products will be available in our shop: From Portugal with love!
Although it rained more or less the whole week, it was still a wonderful short vacation where we gathered many new impressions and came up with new ideas. Lisbon is a great and exciting city, the people are very pleasant and open. We will definitely come back!
