A Trip to Pollastrini

Pollastrini is hard to find. It’s not lost along a gravel path on a remote estuary. It is behind a vast abandoned-looking warehouse complex, next a parking lot full of cop cars and fire trucks. On the day of my visit, a burned out and abandoned Mac Truck sat in the shoulder, distracting my attention from the entrance. 

Anzio is an hour’s drive south of Rome but still in its sprawl. I felt New Jersey vibes. The cafe where I sipped the tiniest ristretto had gaudy, delicious pastries, scratch off cards, silver velvet chairs, and a clear cast of local characters, including doughnut-eating cops. Confectioner’s sugar and gossip filled the air. My pronunciation of sfogliatelle was very amusing to the barista. Her nails had jewels. Her face could have been on a Roman coin. 

I turned around in the parking lot of Pollastrini more than once, unsure. Eventually Andrea walked up to my car window. He was working on some minor plumbing repairs and spotted my back-and-forth trajectory. There’s no sign on the entrance. And from the exterior, the scale of the edifice dwarfs the output of his third-generation family-owned canning company. 

Pollastrini is Italy’s only sardine cannery. The company has been in existence since 1889. It was started by Andrea’s great-grandparents, and managed by his father and grandfather before him. At the moment of my visit, the business was in a pause between the best season for catching fat sardines (October-December) and the resumption of work, canning the year’s first catch in February. Small repairs were being made. New tile, painting, re-plumbing parts of a vast, water-intensive workspace. Most of the stainless steel equipment that Pollastrini use has been in operation for 50 years. In the airy, high-ceilinged interior, massive, gleaming, inscrutable machines were scattered randomly, like a child’s abandoned toys. 

I needed an explanation of how fish end up neatly, uniformly packed in Pollastini’s colorful tins. Elena, Andrea’s loquacious, high energy partner greeted me at the threshold. Her walking tour through the vast dormant warehouse space was a torrent of information. As I understand, all the hand work at Pollastrini is done by women. Elena claims they have better sorting dexterity. Next to a beheading machine that looks like a macabre roller coaster ride of small canoes, 20 female employees sort the sardines. In seasons of smaller fish, 6-7 will end up in a tin. When the catch is larger, 4-5 will fill out a tin. Andrea said it’s not possible to label the tins with sizing, because Pollastrini print the packaging a few weeks before the boats catch the sardines. The harvest remains largely up to nature, and contains an element of chance.

After being beheaded and sorted, the sardines pass slowly through the longest piece of equipment in the warehouse. In this narrow conveyor, they are cooked with 100-degree Celsius vapor. Now sterilized, the fish are moved to large vats, where their cans are filled with either olive oil or tomato sauce. After being sealed, the tins are packed into a giant autoclave, where they are pressure-cooked. They emerge from this old intimidating machine shelf stable for 5+ years. Andrea said his best “vintage” sardines are at their finest around the five year mark. 

Sturdy leather and canvas aprons line the wall. There are abundant showers in the large locker room. Cleaning fish is messy work. But how do our little scaly friends get to Anzio? Andrea emphasizes that the method of fishing is unchanged across history. Small boats follow the schools of fish. They migrate, and the “gozzo” traditional type of boat follows the migration. Because of this movement, all of Pollastrini’s fish are caught in the Mediterranean, but not necessarily in the vicinity of Anzio.

They are caught on moonless nights. The clupea pilchardus sardines are attracted to light. so the fishermen hang a big crystal lamp from the front of the vessel, and throw large nets into the water when the schools of sardines approach the surface. It sounds simple. I’m sure Andrea is sparing me some of the complexity. 

Engraulis encrasicolus anchovies are caught and packed in midsummer. As a staple of Italian cooking from Piemonte to Sicily, anchovy packing facilities are significantly more common on the Italian peninsula. I like Pollastrini’s, they are meaty and salty. But I’m visiting because of the sardines.  

Upstairs in the office area, sea foam tiles form sailing ship patterns on the floor. All the hallmarks of a small family business are here. Files cover every centimeter of a large couch. Elena buzzes around looking for lost scotch tape. It’s controlled chaos, of the variety any employee of a tiny business will recognise. We looked at historical documents listing export prices a century ago. Even though the company has deep roots, they are experimenting.

We admired some new jarred products they made two months ago. Sauces, essentially: pesto and sugo, heavy on the fish, fleshed out with classic Italian flavors. Elena designed the labels for their vintage sardines, which are very much in keeping with the traditional aesthetic of Pollastrini.

Andrea hinted at a possible trip to the states this summer, which I think is a brilliant idea. After a round of smiling group photos, it was time to go. They had a month or less to repair all the shopworn parts of this enormous warehouse, scant time before the new fish arrive. I wasn’t helping. In fact, I’d already stepped on a tile ramp with wet grout, and bent it. The workman laboring nearby was not amused. 

Even in this period of dormancy, I learned things. I saw the modern technology (a vast cold room for receiving fish, for example) and also understood how their process is slow, and unchanged. I saw a little storage warehouse with a few thousand tins of fish, and started charting our next order. Most importantly, I felt the energy and ambition of the happy couple pulling the levers at Pollastrini, a singular entity on the landscape of Italian food culture.