***
"... today, tinned fish is as much a sensible grocery item as it is a status symbol, a viral “hot girl food,” a borderline luxury good. I think it would probably take a long time to explain... why you can buy limited-edition tinned fish at concerts and why there is coveted merch for sale about tinned fish and why a store exists in New York City called the Fantastic World of the Portuguese Sardine where a single-serving tin of said fantastic sardine can cost $44. [...]Because $44 feels like a small price to pay for a sociological education, I spent some weeks recently sampling as much of this genre as I could. I ate not just sardines but also smoked salmon marinated in chili oil, small-batch mussels in sweet pepper and garlic, various types of trout, anchovies and an enormous amount of t*** — so much t*** that I refuse to look at the word anymore and you cannot make me spell it out — and what I learned is that most of it tastes kind of just … OK?
... But as I “made dinner” after work every night, i.e. nibbled t*** straight out of the package like a raccoon (tinned-fish cookbooks do exist, but if you are someone who enjoys defaulting to the lowest common denominator of effort available, you, too, might be a secret raccoon), a different idea occurred to me.
by Amy X. Wang, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Hannah Whitaker for The New York Times
