Come como Kiki travels: Algarve
Tangoing with sardines, “a rainha do mar português” (the queen of the Portuguese sea)
Welcome to Come como Kiki! If you’re new here, Come como Kiki is a twice-weekly newsletter typically published on Wednesdays and Fridays. Wednesday posts are usually dedicated to a particular recipe, cooking technique, or food tradition here in Spain, while Fridays are a roundup post of all things culinary (recipes, articles, seasonal produce, restaurants in Madrid) that I’ve loved that week. Every other week we also have a Sunday Sobremesa discussion post, where we chat in the comments about a chosen topic.
This week brings my second post in a series called Come como Kiki Travels. Each travel newsletter focuses on a particular food/cuisine of a place that I’ve traveled, a bit of history or interesting facts about the food, and my experience. These posts don’t have a particular schedule; they pop up from time to time in the weekly Wednesday newsletter slot.
Today’s newsletter talks about Algarve, Portugal, where we’ve been many times to eat delicious grilled sardines.
Growing up, my dad loved canned sardines. This was inexplicably embarrassing to me at the time; I thought my father was deeply uncool and I didn’t dare tell my friends that our kitchen cabinets were filled with stacked silver tins containing tiny silver fish (sorry, Dad, I think you’re cool now!).
Fast forward to when I first moved to Spain, and David explained to me how prized conservas1 are there. I rolled my eyes because—gross. Only dads and people on weird diets ate canned fish. At the time, the world’s single pop culture reference to canned tuna was Jessica Simpson’s Chicken of the Sea gaffe.2 Little did we know that in a few short years Tinned Fish Date Night would be trending on TikTok.
But this article isn’t about canned sardines (which are stilled appreciated much more by my dad than by me). It’s about grilled sardines, particularly the exquisite ones found in Algarve, Portugal.
I first visited Algarve with David in early fall of 2015. It was my first trip to southern Portugal, and only my second trip to the country in general (I had visited Lisbon in 2007 and declared it my favorite place in Europe after the long weekend I spent there). Algarve is a beautiful region that’s quite varied in its geography: eastern beaches closer to the Spanish border are wide and expansive, while tiny, rocky coves dot the coast farther west in Lagos. One thing that’s consistent across the region, though, is the fantastic fish and seafood.
Getting me to try langosta3 and carabineros4 was an easy feat, but I was resistant to the grilled sardines (or sardinhas in Portuguese). If I didn’t like tinned sardines—the ones with heads and tails already removed, destroying all semblance to a previously sentient being—how was I expected to eat a fresh one, staring up at me from my plate? One that I had to debone myself?
In doing some reading for this piece, I stumbled across this article from National Geographic Portugal detailing the importance of sardines in the country. One of my favorite quotes from the feature is the following (translated from Portuguese):
If abundance means royalty, the sardine is indisputably the queen of the Portuguese sea.
Basically, sardines were inescapable—particularly grilled, which is how they’re typically prepared in Portugal—so I was just going to have to give in and try them.
For someone with limited experience in deboning fish, grilled sardines are intimidating. They arrive on your plate whole, head and tail attached, as if maybe they piled up on your plate to sunbathe but lay out too long and became a little crispy. For a bigger fish, you can usually ask the waiter to clean the fish and plate the filets, but no waiter is going to slice open your sardines for you. You’re on your own.
To open them, you cut through the underside of the body and wiggle your knife under the meat to separate it from the spine. You then flip the fish open, effectively leaving two fish filets—one (mostly) boneless and the other still attached to the spine. Finally, in a stealth maneuver that I usually fail at, you lift the spine from that bottom filet, taking the head and tail along with it.
In the grand scheme of things, making a mistake while deboning the sardines is benign. The bones are tiny, so while you’ll want to pick out as many as possible, if you miss one or two they’re not going to pose any real danger to an adult.
What you have to look out for, the part with the worst consequences, is the tripa.5 You’ll know the tripa because it’s the darker part of the meat near the head of the sardine. It’s the section that you want to avoid at all costs. If a bit of it gets in your mouth, you’ll be met with an intense, bitter flavor that will make you second-guess your commitment to trying the local cuisine. Don’t eat the tripa, I repeat, no te comas la tripa!67
If you successfully navigate your way through prepping the sardine (or successfully convince your meal partner to do it for you—not that I’ve ever done this personally, of course…), you’ll be met with salty, smoky, flaky filets. Don’t be afraid to eat the skin; that’s where the smoky flavor comes from and you’ll barely notice the texture. Some people feel that sardines have a strong flavor, and it’s true that it’s distinctive. But I don’t think that they necessarily have a super “fishy” taste, and even less so when grilled fresh compared to the tinned version.
You can find grilled sardines all over the Algarve region, and all over Portugal, really. But if you ever find yourself there, I suggest seeking out a place called Dona Barca in Portimão. It’s one of my favorite places that I’ve eaten sardines in southern Portugal, and as I’ve been back to the area two additional times after that first trip in 2015, I’ve eaten a lot of them.
This post may be focused on sardines, but there are a million other delicious foods to try in Algarve if they’re not your cup of tea. Bacalhau à Brás, bolinhas de berlim, potatoes that would put Idaho to shame (David’s mom always says that the best potatoes grow in Portugal, and she’s right): so many foods, so little time. Perhaps there needs to be an Algarve part two?
Have you ever had sardines (in any way, shape, or form)? If so, have you encountered the dreaded tripa? Is there a food that used to intimidate you but you now love? Comments are open below!
See you Friday!
Ki
Conservas: Canned food, particularly fish and seafood in this case
On Jessica Simpson: Can we take a moment to reflect on how harsh we all were on Jessica Simpson (and basically every other starlet) back then? I know she played into the “ditziness” somewhat, but it’s like we collectively lost all decency in discussing people in the early 2000s.
Langosta: Lobster
Carabineros: A type of prawn (my favorite type, in fact, even though I can never remember if they’re called “carabineros” or “carabiñeros”)
Tripa: Intestines
No te comas la tripa: Don’t eat the intestines. No really, don’t.
On avoiding the tripa: Some people remove the tripa before grilling sardines at home to avoid this problem.
Yes your Dad liked sardines with vinegar poured over them. I couldn’t even stand to smell them. He would have to take the tin outside and throw them away because I couldn’t stand the smell! I don’t know if it was the sardines or vinegar but it stank! So I might like them grilled, it’s worth a try because I love fish!