Ati Manel Guide: Portuguese Tins From Mussels to Garfish

October 12, 2026

Ati Manel is a Portuguese conservas brand rebuilt from a family archive. The man it is named for built a canning business whose brand dates to 1922. Generations later, when the family divided his estate, they found his old labels, printing stones and a notebook of recipes in the family house, and his great-grandson, a designer, set about putting the tins back on the market with the look of their era. This guide covers that archive, where the range is packed, and how to serve each tin, from spiced mussels in escabeche to garfish in olive oil.

A few terms first. Conservas is the Portuguese and Spanish word for preserved foods, used for seafood sealed in tins and heat-treated so it keeps without refrigeration; the conservas and canned fish guide explains how the word is used. Escabeche is a sauce built on oil and vinegar with spices, used to season and preserve fish and shellfish. Brine is salted water. A pâté (say "pah-TAY") is a smooth, spreadable paste, here made from fish. A fillet is a piece of fish cut away from the bone.

The great-grandfather

The brand's own account is told in the first person by the great-grandson, who says he heard about his great-grandfather, Ati Manel, many times but never met him. Ati Manel built his canning business, in the account's words, at a cost but with great determination. The original brand dates to 1922, and the great-grandson who revived it is Luís Mendonça.

The account places the business inside the history of Portuguese canning. The First World War gave the industry a push, and by the mid-1920s, the account says, there were about four hundred canning factories in Portugal; by the late 1930s fewer than half remained. Demand rose again during the Second World War, when Ati Manel sent small parcels of tins to friends abroad. His health declined, but he lived to see the prosperity of the 1950s. For the wider story of how Portugal came to can so much fish, see the Portugal conservas guide.

The archive at Reveles

The things Ati Manel left behind, the account says, sat gathering dust in the family house at Reveles. When the family divided his estate, they found a great deal tied to making and selling conservas: stamps, engravings, screen-printing frames, lithographic stones (flat stones that printers once drew on and inked to print labels), offset plates, boxes of labels, notes on foreign markets, contacts with agents, producers and fishermen, and letters from several countries with comments on the tins. Among them was a notebook of preserving formulas and recipes.

"As a designer, this inheritance fell to me," the great-grandson writes. He restored the old alphabets, color palettes, textures and patterns, and adapted the graphics to the labeling rules of different countries and continents while keeping the visual spirit of the period. That is why an Ati Manel tin looks the way it does: the design restores the family's own printing material.

Where the tins are packed

The maker describes the work behind the revival as care for raw materials and close ties with producers, suppliers, lotas (the Portuguese fish auctions where boats sell their catch) and fishermen, recreating traditional recipes with present-day production methods. Its own list of what that meant reads like a cook's notebook: how to keep razor clams and scallops fresh, the care taken in preparing tuna fillets, the best olive oil for sardines, the escabeche for mussels, the stuffing for squid and the garlic sauce for octopus.

The range draws on the waters of Portugal and Galicia, a region of northwest Spain on the Atlantic coast. The product pages name the places. The smoked sardine pâtés and the sardines in spiced olive oil are made from sardines caught in the Atlantic and canned by hand on the spot in Matosinhos, Portugal. The mussels in escabeche are made in Galicia, and the razor clams are hand-harvested from the silty sands of Galicia.

The range, tin by tin

Spiced mussels in escabeche

On an English label, escabeche becomes "pickled sauce." The Spiced Mussels in Pickled Sauce (shop Ati Manel Spiced Mussels) are made in Galicia in the old way, according to the product page, in a spicy twist on a classic escabeche of oil, vinegar and pepper. The maker's own page lists garlic, onion, olive oil, vinegar and tomato combined in a spicy escabeche sauce. The Mussels in Pickled Sauce (shop Ati Manel Mussels in Pickled Sauce) are the unspiced version, a classic escabeche of oil, vinegar and spice.

The maker traces the sauce to al-Andalus, the name for the parts of the Iberian Peninsula under Muslim rule in the Middle Ages, and calls escabeche one of the oldest recipes that pairs good preservation with a distinctive flavor, a flavor that changed from country to country as it traveled. "The hands that prepare the escabeche also add their own secrets," the maker's page says.

How to serve them: the product page suggests crusty bread for dipping in the sauce, French fries, or a simple green salad. Keep the sauce for the bread. The mussels escabeche on toast recipe turns one tin into a plate of toasts, and the tinned shellfish guide covers mussels in tins more broadly.

Razor shells in brine

Razor clams are long, narrow shellfish with a shell shaped like an old straight razor; in Portuguese they are lingueirão. The maker lists this tin as Lingueirão ao Natural, which the English label renders as "in brine." The Razor Shells in Brine (shop Ati Manel Razor Shells) are hand-harvested from the silty sands of Galicia, according to the product page, and come slightly trimmed, which makes them good for cooking while staying whole enough to set out on a board of pintxos (small bites, often on bread, served in bars in northern Spain).

How to serve them: the product page suggests garlic-rubbed crostini (thin toasted slices of bread) with piquillo peppers, a small sweet red pepper sold roasted, or chopping them into a quick ceviche with fresh chiles, shallot and lime. Brine is the plainest packing liquid in the range, so this tin puts the shellfish itself first. The razor clams guide covers the shellfish itself.

Garfish, plain and spiced

Garfish, Belone belone, is a long, slender, needle-like fish with striking silver skin and a firm texture, according to the product pages. FishBase, the scientific database of fish species, places it in the needlefish family and records that it lives close to the surface in the eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean, grows to about 104 centimeters (roughly 3.4 feet), and leaps out of the water when hooked.

Ati Manel packs it two ways. The Garfish in Olive Oil (shop Ati Manel Garfish in Olive Oil) is packed in Portuguese olive oil, and the Garfish in Spiced Olive Oil (shop Ati Manel Garfish in Spiced Olive Oil) in Portuguese spicy olive oil. The spiced tin's product page calls it a must-try for anyone who enjoys sardines and mackerel.

How to serve them: crusty bread, a simple salad, a glass of wine, or a place on a tinned fish board, as the product pages suggest. Open the plain tin first to taste the fish, then the spiced one to taste what the oil adds. The garfish guide covers the fish in depth.

Tuna fillets, plain and spiced

Both tuna tins use skipjack, caught by pole and line, according to the product pages. Skipjack (Katsuwonus pelamis) is a tuna of tropical and warm-temperate seas worldwide, commonly about 80 centimeters long (about 2.6 feet) measured to the fork of the tail, and FishBase lists it as marketed fresh, frozen or canned. Pole and line fishing, as the Marine Stewardship Council (an international nonprofit that runs a certification program for sustainable fisheries) describes it, uses a hand-held wooden or fiberglass pole with a line, catches fish one at a time close to the surface, and is typically used for smaller tuna such as skipjack and albacore.

The fillets are carved off the bone by hand, given a gentle steam and then a bath in olive oil, according to the product pages. In the Spiced Tuna Fillets in Olive Oil (shop Ati Manel Spiced Tuna Fillets) the oil is infused with aromatics, chili and spices; the Tuna Fillets in Olive Oil (shop Ati Manel Tuna Fillets) use locally sourced olive oil.

The maker calls its tuna a "classic," in the sense of anything in literature or music that stays relevant and necessary. How to serve them: the maker's page for the spiced tin lists rice, potatoes, pasta, combined dishes, salads and sandwiches, and the product pages add white beans and crusty bread. The tinned tuna and ventresca guide explains the species and cuts found in tins.

Smoked sardine pâté, plain and spiced

The Spiced Smoked Sardine Pâté (shop Ati Manel Spiced Smoked Sardine Pâté) goes by "Patê Sardinha Fumada Picante" in the maker's Portuguese: sardine, smoked, spicy. Its sardines are caught in the Atlantic and canned by hand on the spot in Matosinhos, according to the product page. The Smoked Sardine Pâté (shop Ati Manel Smoked Sardine Pâté) is the same idea without the heat. The maker's pâté line also includes smoked mackerel, smoked tuna and smoked trout.

How to serve them: the product pages suggest pickled vegetables and crusty bread. Spread the pâté thickly on toast and set something sharp and crunchy beside it, such as cornichons or pickled carrots, to cut the richness of the smoked fish. The fish pâté guide explains how tinned pâtés are made, and the smoked fish in tins guide covers smoking.

Three more from the notebook

The Octopus in Garlic Sauce (shop Ati Manel Octopus in Garlic Sauce) is the clearest link to the archive: its product page says the recipe is modeled on the great-grandfather's original, and it calls the sauce more garlic-infused olive oil than emulsified sauce (an emulsified sauce is one where oil and liquid are blended into a single creamy mixture). The product page pairs it with warm potatoes, a drizzle of olive oil and paprika. The Mackerel Fillets in Olive Oil (shop Ati Manel Mackerel Fillets) are hand-sliced off the bone and skinned, and the product page suggests serving them as they are or flaking them into a sandwich. The Sardines in Spiced Olive Oil (shop Ati Manel Sardines in Spiced Olive Oil) come from the same Matosinhos hand-canning as the pâtés.

A board in five tins

The liquid in each tin sets the order. Brine is the lightest, plain olive oil comes next, spiced oil adds heat, escabeche adds vinegar, and smoked pâté is the richest. Serving in that order lets each tin be tasted before a stronger one covers it.

Order	Tin	What it is packed in	Serve with
1	Razor Shells in Brine	Brine; hand-harvested in Galicia	Garlic-rubbed crostini, piquillo peppers
2	Garfish in Olive Oil	Portuguese olive oil	Crusty bread, simple salad
3	Spiced Tuna Fillets in Olive Oil	Olive oil with aromatics, chili and spices; pole and line skipjack	White beans, salad, rice or potatoes
4	Spiced Mussels in Pickled Sauce	Spicy escabeche; made in Galicia	Bread for the sauce, French fries
5	Spiced Smoked Sardine Pâté	Smoked and spiced; canned by hand in Matosinhos	Toast, pickled vegetables

Save the oil and escabeche at the end. The guide to leftover tin oil and sauce has uses for both.

A notebook that outlived the factory floor

Ati Manel is best explained by a box of family papers: the labels came from restored printing stones and engravings, and the recipes from a notebook of formulas, with the maker's own list of what it set out to understand reading like that notebook's table of contents. The fish come from Portuguese and Galician waters today, but what makes the range recognizable as Ati Manel, the look on the outside and the escabeche and garlic sauce on the inside, survived on paper in a family house, and that paper is what the new tins are built from. Explore the Ati Manel collection.

The shop is at 263 Josephine Street in Cherry Creek, Denver, and products ship nationwide from theambrosianpantry.com.