Grilled Hake Cheeks in Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Güeyu Mar is one of the most extraordinary conservas producers in Spain — a project born from the legendary Asturian beachside restaurant of the same name, where chef Abel Alvarez built a global reputation for cooking fish and seafood over open wood fire on the Cantabrian shore. This is one of the most prized and unusual tins in the entire range.

Hake (merluza) is the most important fish in Basque and Cantabrian cooking — a white fish of remarkable delicacy, clean flavour, and a texture that is firmer and more gelatinous than most other white fish, particularly in the cheek. The cheek is the prized muscle from either side of the fish’s head: small, dense, and extraordinarily tender, with a natural richness and a subtle sweetness that the rest of the fillet cannot match. In Spain’s finest restaurants, hake cheeks (kokotxas) are a luxury ingredient — slow-cooked in olive oil to release their natural gelatin and produce a sauce of remarkable silkiness. Güeyu Mar grills them over open fire before packing them in extra virgin olive oil with just salt, applying their signature technique to one of the Cantabrian coast’s most celebrated cuts. The result is a tin of exceptional quality and real rarity: tender, gelatinous, deeply flavoured, and unlike anything else in the conservas world.