Ortiz Bonito Tuna from Basque

Excerpt from Ari’s Top 5 enews

So good, we’ll sell over 50,000 tins this month alone!

That stat is no joke! The Ortiz Bonito tuna has long been the biggest seller in the Deli’s annual Summer Sale. Customers in-the-know buy up multiple cases at a time to stock their pantry for the rest of the year, and from the day this enews goes out, there will be about ten days left to buy a bunch at the special pricing!

The Ortiz family have been packing tuna, anchovies, and other small fish from the Cantabrian Sea on the north coast of the Spanish Basque Country for over a century now. Their conservas, or tinned fish, is recognized across the world as some of THE finest. They’ve been doing this work in the village of Ondarroa since 1920, at which time, barely over a decade since his death, Francisco Ferrer would still have been a well-known—and still controversial—figure in Spain.

What makes the Ortiz Bonito tuna so outstanding? Quality, speed, care, and commitment to doing all the details right. They guarantee fishermen top dollar in advance in order to make sure they secure the best of the best that’s available. When the fishing boats arrive at the dock, they’re unloaded and the fresh fish are at the Ortiz facilities within an hour. If you visit Spain, you’ll find that tuna in tins has long been amongst the jewels of the country’s culinary crown. (It’s not hard to imagine Francisco Ferrer eating tuna of this quality level as a tapa in the cafes of Barcelona.) Go into almost any moderately good Spanish supermarket and you’ll see an entire aisle of tinned tuna, sardines, and anchovies (along with canned seafood specialties like cuttlefish, squid, and octopus). What Spaniards call Bonito is the mellowest and most highly prized in Spain. We know it here as “Albacore.”

The Ortiz Bonito is delicate, white, and delicious. It’s terrific for salads, for appetizer platters, or for eating on its own right out of the jar dressed with some top-notch olive oil and a sprinkling of sea salt. It’s particularly good right now with potatoes and beans to make a Salade Niçoise. Great in rice dishes or in pasta. A marvelous pan-Mediterranean tuna melt! Also amazing on a Sandwich Tunisien. There’s a wide range of recipes on the Ortiz website. Pick up a tin, a case or ten while the Summer Sale is still going!

> SHOP ORTIZ AT THE DELI