Matiz Sardines Variety Pack, Wild Caught Spanish Waters | 10 Tins | In Olive Oil, Sweet Piquillo Pepper, Spicy Piri Piri Pepper and Lemon Essence

Very fine sardines, nicely packed. Look for deals or bundles as they have a few varieties and I recommend them all. Delicious fish!

As anyone thinking about Matiz sardines probably already knows, not all sardines are created equal. Most American "grocery store" sardines are fairly bland. I believe that is intentional to make them more palatable to taste-shy Americans.Matiz sardines taste like sardines! Each variety is different, not just in spicing but also in terms of the specific sub-type of sardine. They range from 3 big sardines per can to a dozen tiny ones. All with skin on for flavor. I have to admit, I had never tried sardines with lemon, but decided to give this assortment a try. Pleasant surprise! I love the lemon sardines for tossing onto pasta.Before the pandemic, we used to go to a few different Asian markets in town that stock a good assortment of sardines. One even has a whole aisle of sardines they way many groceries have an aisle of breakfast cereals. With the pandemic, however, we keep shopping to a minimum. Luckily, these Matiz sardines are wonderful and we can get the delivered straight to our door! (This is our second purchase of the same Matiz assortment.) Even once this pandemic is over (or at least subdued), I think we'll continue buying these Matiz sardines.

If you like sardines but have only had the cans from the grocery store, try these. They. Are. Great! Same size cans but the sardines are bigger and taste mild and fresh

These are very good, but personally i prefer Nuri brand. These seem to be a bit more fishy tasting and smelling.

I would say if you enjoy fish and sardines in particular i found these Spanish sardines absolutely delishes.

Splendid! My primary was Underwood Sardines in Mustard Sauce for years. Very few do mustard anymore, so now it's about quality. These are top notch and such a clean and pure flavor. I had them with black pepper crackers and it was a great combo.

I've tried each of the four varieties that were in this pack at this point. The fish are consistently a little finny, with an occasional scale; I don't mind this but you might. They are occasionally not as completely gutted as I might have liked. The skins are pretty consistently a bit "beat up" looking rather than smooth and shiny.Texturally, the fish hold together reasonably well; I can generally pick a whole Matiz fish up out of the tin with chopsticks without it falling apart. Flavor is a nice, solid, fishy-but-not-overwhelming Atlantic sardine.I think I enjoyed the lemon ones the most; I hadn't had Atlantic sardines with lemon flavor before, only Pacific, and the Atlantic sardine seems to me broadly superior. The lemon essence here is a nice accompaniment rather than covering up the faults of the Pacific sardine. I was slightly disappointed to notice that the lemon Matiz sardines were in sunflower oil rather than olive oil like the rest. I was surprised that the lemon tin had four or five medium-sized fish, rather than three large ones like the piri piri and olive oil tins.The sweet pepper sardines are a smaller tin, and also smaller fish, sprat-sized, with around eight or ten in the can, nicely layered/packed. The sweet peppers were somewhere between very subtle and imperceptible in flavor. While I appreciate the aesthetics of carefully packed small sardines, that was the main things that these had going for them.My grocery store carries the piri piri Matiz sardines as their topmost-shelf sardine option, so I have more experience with these. These are consistently three largish fish per tin, and one tiny pepper. Some of the heat from the pepper permeates out into the oil and the fish. It's a pretty moderate level of spicy unless you eat the pepper, but sometimes it is a little more than I want. I like putting these (including all of the oil in the tin) in pasta, where the spiciness becomes more diffuse.The "in spanish olive oil" sardines are just... sardines. They're fine. With nothing else to notice about these, some of the minor faults of Matiz fish generally, like finniness or guttiness, become more apparent.In terms of value for money, they're OK-to-good. I don't think I've had sardines of dramatically better quality at this price point, and you could certainly do worse, but I'm also not blown away here. I suppose I'd say it's a fair price.I wish they had a tomato sauce offering.

Love that they are wild caught and still have the bones in which are soft and edible and pack a huge calcium wallop! The variety pack is wonderful, each kind is unique and lovely. I went back to the pictures on Amazon for food-pairing like they would in Spain for tapas. And we buy these over and over again the quality is extraordinarily consistent. Thank you!