At Saltie Girl, meals begin quickly. The gentle marinating of sardines in lobster-infused grapeseed oil—that happened already, back in Brittany. Chefs here simply crank open the pretty Groix et Nature tin and place it on a platter with bread and a sprinkling of zingy accoutrements. Wash it down with a savory martini-esque Saltie cocktail with caviar and pickled onion—and voilà: utmost class.

That’s how meals should begin in one of America’s tinned fish-craze epicenters. Skeptical? Let go. Imagine you’re in Spain or Portugal, where tin connotes nothing negative. Goodbye, gray tuna steeped in briny water; hello, hand-packed mussels in escabeche sauce. This seafood isn’t stuffed into a can and then boiled—it’s been carefully cooked and then preserved, left to mature gracefully alongside Mediterranean ingredients: EVOO and lemon, sun-dried tomato and piquillo peppers, seaweed and squid ink.

Fundamentally, the best tinned fish is all about capturing the bounty of the sea when it’s in prime form—and the rest of Saltie Girl’s menu expresses the same philosophy. From yellowtail crudo with peak-season stone fruit and ponzu to deep-fried lobster over fluffy waffles, the menu does right by any sea creature. (Or landlubber; we’ve got nothing against that cube of marbled, dry-aged steak tartare, either.)

Owner-chef duo Kathy Sidell and Kyle McClelland may not have anticipated a deluge of Newbury Street tourists seeking out tinned sardines during chain-store shopping sprees—as a result, this spot squeezed into a side-street brownstone is just about as big as a submarine. And that’s okay. Leave the very large, very American-sounding bar-grill neighbors to everyone else. Arrive early, get on the list, and then dive into the best of the sea—whether it’s from across the ocean or our own little coast; whether it’s baked, fried, torched, smoked, raw, or tinned.