As It Happens

This London restaurant serves one thing only -- canned fish

There's no chef and no kitchen at the Tincan restaurant in London. They're not necessary. To attack your meal, all you need is enough muscle to peel back the lid on a tin of fish....
There's no chef and no kitchen at the Tincan restaurant in London. They're not necessary. To attack your meal, all you need is enough muscle to peel back the lid on a tin of fish.

The restaurant is the brainchild of a group of architects who fell in love with canned fish in Lisbon.

"In Portugal, they have this tradition of eating very good seafood from a tin," Maximiliano Arrocet explains to Carol. "We were just so amazed the taste that we started bringing them back to the office as gifts. It began as a hobby."

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Arrocet understands that many people in the UK and elsewhere have a somewhat less enthusiastic attitude towards canned fish. What's on offer at Tincan is much different.

"We have really exotic things, like sea urchin caviar or baby squid in their own ink," he says.

So far, though, they don't have the stinky Swedish tinned fish surstromming.

Even if you don't appreciate oily, canned fish, you can admire the packaging.

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"One of the things that really caught our attention were the graphics of the tins," he says. "Because we are architects, we feel very passionate about this."

Some of the canned fish are served on their own. But usually they are accompanied by bread, salad and olive oil. And, of course, beer and wine.

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Another unusual offering on the menu is cod liver from Iceland.

"I used to get cod liver oil when I was a kid, so when I tried it, I couldn't believe how good it was," he says. "It's quite creamy."