Anchovies are meant to be packed in olive oil. “They should be packed in olive oil rather than lesser quality cottonseed or soy oil” per no less an authority than New York Times food writer Melissa Clark, a woman who once convinced me that it is a problem for hamburgers to be too tightly packed, leading me to serve cooked ground meat one night for dinner in approximately 2009. But on this, she’s 100% correct. Olive oil or don’t bother. There are anchovy rankings where the olive oil status is presumed.
But for whatever reason, Canada (by “Canada” I mean some stores I’ve looked at in west Toronto and some googling I did) doesn’t sell anchovies in olive oil. I take it the U.S. does, given the food-media coverage of this product, but I don’t remember paying attention to this topic 1,000 years ago when I still lived there. That was back when I was still young and full of more exciting pursuits.
But now I do care, and the results are dispiriting. Supermarkets, no, Italian groceries, no. There is a bottle in my refrigerator, for which I paid eight Canadian dollars, containing slimy, specimen-looking anchovies in sunflower oil—the best (the only?) on offer at the local fish store. I cannot get myself to throw it out, partly because of the logistics of putting such an item in the garbage, but to the garbage it will eventually go.
Why can I not find this product? And it’s not even like the Everlane t-shirts, which are yes better than the Kotn ones (sorry but they are) and can be ordered, but it costs a lot to order them. This is just not sold. Why?
I know that the price of olive oil itself has gone up, but you can still buy other fish (tuna, etc) in olive oil. You can still buy olive oil. Does Canada have a sunflower oil surplus, and someone decided anchovies are the way?
I had found one source—one!—of the product I’m talking about. Eataly used to have them, and they were the good ones, even if storage was always a bit of a hassle (remove from can to store in glass tupperware thingy, and then store for how long? a risk I regularly took to no ill effects, I think).
Per the website, Eataly still has them, but I have not seen much evidence irl, neither on a recentish search myself nor when my husband was there and I was frantically texting him about the anchovies. I could try including them in an online order—a really decadent-seeming approach to grocery-shopping I have done a couple times, during the pandemic, and that for weird Canadian reasons winds up costing the same as a trip to a dingy local chain supermarket—but what if they do a substitute and then I find myself with yet another bottle of anchovies incorrectly preserved?
I have a specific reason to be concerned: Eataly says it sells anchovies in olive oil in a glass container, but my attention to detail kicked in and I’m afraid they do not.
Obviously, I am posting this because I want you, reader, to comment email whatever with the source for anchovies packed in olive oil and sold in Toronto. This isn’t going to happen but one must put the proverbial shingle out to try.
I'll FedEx you some from Seattle if you like...
I was going to say surely De La Mer has some... and then learned the sad news.
Have you ever visited the Osler Fish Market (a pleasant journey as it's right off the West Toronto Railpath) or their charmingly named A Lota Seafoods spinoff shop on Dundas? Call first tho!