Chris McDade Is About To Become America’s Tinned Fish Ambassador

On a recent spring evening in Brooklyn, couples sit amid the shooting flames of outdoor space heaters on the back patio of Popina, a neighborhood Italian restaurant that’s fast becoming a destination date-night spot for New Yorkers. Many of these diners order the same appetizer: anchovies on top of slabs of butter artfully arranged on slices of crusty bread. The crostini dish is rich, luxurious, and offers a warm rush of umami.

It’s also the first recipe in Popina chef and co-owner Chris McDade’s debut cookbook, The Magic of Tinned Fish, out June 22 from Artisan Books. McDade, a Georgia-born chef who worked his way through some of New York City’s most exciting Italian kitchens—among them Maialino and Café Altro Paradiso—grew up eating canned oysters on fishing trips in the South, and has channeled his childhood memories into dishes that rank amongst the most memorable at Popina.

The restaurant, which opened nearly four years ago, can live alone off McDade’s hot chicken Milanese, a mash-up of the Nashville-style spicy chicken and the Italian fried cutlet. He also uses the Southern staple Carolina Gold rice to lend a personal touch to his popular arancini, which he places atop a saffron honey sauce. These dishes and others made Popina a best-kept-secret before the pandemic and anchored a menu that continued to attract new patrons over the past year as New Yorkers slowly emerged from the shutdowns.

Now, Popina is hopping, using its outdoor spaces to triple in size, while the once-intimate dining room is now home to a beloved wine and provisions ship curated by McDade and his partner James O’Brien, who oversees the beverage program (and who knows a thing or two about Italian wine). 

McDade himself is about to parlay his love of tinned fish into a new side career as an ambassador for tinned fish and seafood, which, besides their knack for adding a salty, savory, briny kick to pasta, sandwiches, and other dishes, happens to have health and environmental benefits. Popina's shop carries Patagonia Provisions' line of sustainable tinned seafood like mackarel and anchovies, as well as the often colorfully designed European brands' sardines, anchovies, and others.  

Here, in an edited and condensed interview, McDade tells La Cucina Italiana about the origins of his clever new book, a must for anyone who has a can of seafood and a box of pasta in their cupboards, and potentially the definitive American cookbook on tinned fish.

How did tinned fish become an idea for a cookbook?

My wife and I were walking around and I told her I wanted to do a book on fresh small fish like anchovies, mackerel, and scup and she loved the idea, and usually, if I have an idea that’s not good, she’ll tell me it’s not good, and she said it was a good idea. So I called a friend of mine, Katie Parla, and she gave me the name of two agents, a woman who I called who never called me back, and David Black, who returned my call and had just gotten back from Portugal.

Good timing!
Yes, he was all into the tinned seafood, and he was like, “Well, nobody buys fish books and chef books. Those are hard sells. But if you could do something a little more niche, if you’d be interested in doing it around tinned seafood, I think we might have something.” I didn’t know as much about tinned seafood but I’ve always been a fan of anchovies and smoked oysters, especially. I grew up eating Crown Prince oysters in a can. They’re cheap, shitty oysters but they’re delicious to me. On every fishing trip, we always had Saltines and hot sauce.

So what happened next?

I thought about David’s suggestion and talked to my wife, who said, “Great idea.” David reached out to Judy Pray, and it literally went from an idea to a deal in a month. I didn’t write anything about it.

You didn’t write a proposal?

I didn’t even know that was a thing until afterward!

Where did you grow up?
We lived all around Georgia. We moved a lot when I was growing up.

After you made the decision to write the book, what’d you do?

I kind of dove headfirst. I read everything I could read about how people are using tinned fish now. I’d read about the history, and then I started buying and eating.

And thinking about recipes?

I knew that sandwiches and pasta would be easy. Because I love eating sandwiches and I’ve been cooking pasta for so long, and they lend themselves so well to tinned seafood. Everyone loves pasta and sandwiches, so that’s an easy way to bring people into the world of tinned fish. Tinned fish are also great with salads and fresh vegetables. Then maybe drawing people in with a nice steak or pork roast.

Like the steak with anchovy butter that’s in the book?

Yeah.

What are some of the pasta dishes that stand out in the book?

There’s things you’ve done before like sun gold tomato pasta, where you pop the tomatoes for juice and you fold mackerel in. [Get the recipe here.] Another classic is the sardines with fennel, raisins—con sarde is basically what it is, but sardines aren’t the easiest thing to find and they spoil very quickly. Tinned sardines make it easy, accessible and more approachable if you don’t want to clean a sardine. We have fusilli with ‘nduja and I'm trying to remember...

The fish?

Yeah. There were 35 pastas that didn’t make it in. They had to tell me, “Stop with the pasta.” I had a million pasta ideas, you know! Sardines, fusilli with sardines, ‘Nduja, and Pecorino. You have this oily sardine fish matched up against the fatty, spicy porkiness. A lot of the recipes in this book are trying to pull people into the world of tinned seafood because, especially in the States, it’s so misunderstood and underappreciated. We think tinned seafood is Starkist tuna in a can.

It’s true!

And we purposely didn’t put any tuna recipes in this book, 1) because of the Starkist stereotype that goes with it, and 2) because it’s such an overfished species. Which can be tough though because it’s like ‘chovies and tuna are the name of the game, right? Most of the brands that do the tuna in Italy do it correctly, whereas in the States it’s not the same, or the same quality, right? You find sharded specks packed in water. If you get the beautiful stuff that’s imported from Italy it’s pieces of loin and delicious olive oil, and you can tell more care goes into it. The other stuff is like bycatch in a can.

Yeah, let’s talk about the environmental impact of fish. How much was the sustainability issue brought up in relation to pitching and making this book?

My first conversation was just flavor and I love eating these little fish, but inherently as a chef when you grow up around fish your whole life, eventually you (learn) swordfish/cod bad; mackerel, sardines, anchovies—the little fish are obviously better for the environment. They’re not only better because there’s more of them but they are much easier to catch. And they’re good for you. If we flipped the percentage of small fish to big fish we ate, I don’t think it would take that long to get our seas back to where they should be.

Yeah, people would have to eat a lot of small fish to cause problems.

Yeah, they regenerate. Not like tuna.

Are there dos and don’ts about how to use the liquid in tinned fish and seafood?

First, don’t buy cheap tins because you’re going to have shitty oil. In the book, there’s a note that says there’s nothing that’s stored in water that we use. Oil is more delicious but it’s also a better preservative because it’s full of fat. In some of the recipes we use the oils, especially if it’s something that has flavor, but mostly we just try to build flavor on top of it. We also say these are guidelines so you should experiment.

Such as?

If the recipe calls for mackerel and you have smoked mackerel, try the smoked mackerel. Or use the oil in a salad dressing.

How did you develop the recipes?

Approaching the recipes was like I would approach the recipes at Popina. You have an idea, then you tweak it. Some just made sense. I knew I wanted to have a version of bacon, egg, and cheese because I love a bodega bacon, egg, and cheese, so here we did crab, egg, and cheese. We do a play on a Po' boy. We do a play on the pressed French sandwich that gets better as the juice sits in there and holds. People think of oily fish as overpowering. But if you use them correctly they’re not overpowering at all. They’re a great source of protein and they help fill you up and they do add flavor, obviously, but they just add depth to whatever you’re cooking. Especially anchovies. We sneak anchovies and fish sauce into a lot of stuff here at Popina and people who say they don’t like anchovies say they can’t believe it.