Sardines in Olive Oil

Matiz Sardines in Olive Oil is the best Spanish Wild Caught Sardines that I've found. Plump and large size, great fresh flavor, and you can use the oil when making "Spain on a Fork" Sardine recipe. Worth the price for great quality.

good tasting sardines.

Taste and texture is great. Added this to my list of favorite sardines.

Good

To me the best canned sardines available.

I have been scrounging around the internet for some time (sardines .com, for instance) in search of the finest canned sardines, and I have tasted at least 20-30 different brands. Some of my favorites were the french ones, especially those from Brittany, where one can find all manner of little stores with great selections of sardines and other canned fish. But these, which I first tasted in Europe, have a special "steaky" quality that I love -- dense, chewy texture that is deeply satisfying. Nothing mushy about these -- they may even remind you of a tuna steak. When you open the can, you will see that they are different from what most Americans are used to, as there are usually only three sardines to a can, and are twice as thick as those offered by, say, Bumble Bee. These sardines have power and substance! Eating these is about as close as you'll come to having grilled, fresh sardines in Basque Country with garlic and parsley (I am getting really hungry). Toast up that baguette, add a squirt of lemon, a dash of salt and pepper, and you've got all the lunch you could ever want -- especially when hiking or in a hurry. These sardines will never let you down. My wife, who is generally less enthusiastic about sardines than I am, is ready to wolf these. And of course it is important to remind everyone that these noble fish have a long shelf life. Buy lots of them now and use them to barter for gasoline, ammunition, water filters , propane, and whatever else you may need during the apocalypse/zombie invasion/economic collapse. But chances are you will just keep them for yourself. UPDATE: I live near a Costco, and noticed that they carried five-packs of Seasons sardines. Naturally, I bought enough to last most people for several decades, but I whacked through mine in about a month. They were good. And, at such a low price, I began to wonder if there really wasn't much difference between the Seasons brand and the Matiz. So I ordered five Matiz and put them alongside the Costco fish. There was no contest. The Seasons are fine, and inexpensive. But life is too short to eat OK sardines. Buy the best; buy Matiz -- there are none finer.

These Matiz sardines are good. I bought them for myself and then sent a 5 pack to my mother. Mild and easy to eat. Great nutritional and healing benefits.

At $4.59 a box (the unit price when I bought my pack of 5), I am not sure if they are substantially better than the boneless/skinless sardines I purchase for $2.79 a box. Perhaps this is because I do not eat the skin and bones, even though I know they are edible and, indeed, the bones are good for calcium. But, I find those parts disagreeable and always remove them. So, these are a lot more work...and greasy, smelly work at that. The flavor is slightly better than those, though. With the boneless, skinless Crown Prince, I realize I am sacrificing a bit of flavor for ease and convenience. Perhaps fairer is to compare them to the sardines I normally purchase that do have skin and bones. These MAY, and I am not certain they really do, have a slightly better flavor than the double-layer brisling sardines I also purchase here, Crown Prince 2 Layer Brislings, and those come out to a unit price of $2.28. I really can't say that they are better at all, and certainly not enough as to justify costing double the price. In fact, if I don't factor in the skin and bones, my taste preference is for the smaller sardines, not the larger ones such as these Matiz sardines. Finally, the work of removing the skin and bones from these was more than removing the skin and bones from the CP2LB because these have an almost mushy texture and that makes it harder to remove the slimy skin. One more note, these actually had SCALES on the skin - not something I've ever seen on other canned sardines and, being the large size like the boneless, skinless sardines in my first paragraph, and not the smaller size, the Matiz bones are larger - so, between these two issues - scales and larger bones, I am even less likely to eat them without removing these parts. I have purchased a few other brands that come in this size with skin and bones, but have yet to try them so I can't compare the Matiz to those. On the whole, I was disappointed as I expected these to wow me and they did not live up to my expectations.

Excellent..a little pricey