Table & Travel

Canned tuna was a sta­ple in our house when I was grow­ing up and tuna sand­wiches have always been a favorite of mine. We always had cans of Stark­ist, packed in oil, that mom would mix with may­on­naise and spread on white bread for sand­wiches. As the mer­cury prob­lem raised its head, these sand­wiches became more occa­sional and I switched to the tuna packed in water and later the bags that seem to have a fresher tast­ing produce.

 The best, or at least most mem­o­rable tuna sand­wich I ever had, was in 2004 in the Ital­ian vil­lage of Rosia. Vicki and I had been out explor­ing and stopped at a restaurant/bar in this lit­tle town to have a snack. We decided to order a tuna sand­wich, “sand­wich de tonno,” which was pre­pared for us by a very chatty lady behind the bar who enjoyed using her halt­ing Eng­lish on the Amer­i­cans. The results were fan­tas­tic, large pieces of tuna on focac­cia, drip­ping with olive oil and pun­gent with the fla­vor of capers. We still talk about that won­der­ful sandwich.

Recently the Food & Wine sec­tion of the Sun­day San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle had sub­stan­tial arti­cle on tuna salad, which pre­sented var­i­ous styles and recipes. I decided to try the Fen­nel  & White Bean Tuna salad, which was made of of fen­nel, onion, and oil-packed tuna, mixed with may­on­naise, white beans, and a splash of red wine vine­gar. It was really excel­lent, crunchy and creamy at the same time, with a nice blend of fla­vors and a lit­tle kick from the red wine vine­gar and the capers I added. I went well with the slices of Whole Food’s sour dough.

I bought most of the fix­ings for the tuna salad at Whole Foods. I was look­ing for a can of Dave’s Gourmet alba­core, which had led the pack in a tuna-packed-in-oil tast­ing in the Chronicle’s F&W sec­tion last Novem­ber. Unfor­tu­nately, they didn’t have any so I set­tled on a Sicil­ian import, Flott Solid Light Tuna in pure olive oil. I found it a lit­tle heavy and would like to try the same recipe again with Dave’s.

Fen­nel & White Bean Tuna Salad

Serves 2 to 4, or enough for 4 sandwiches

Crunch comes from fen­nel and red onions in this Italian-inspired tuna salad. Serve it on toasted coun­try bread or over a pile of lightly-dressed arugula.

2 (5-ounce) cans oil-packed white tuna
1/3 cup small-diced fen­nel
1/3 cup small-diced red onion
1 table­spoon capers, drained
3 table­spoons minced pars­ley
1/2 cup canneds­mall can­nellini beans, rinsed and drained
1/3 cup may­on­naise
1 table­spoon red wine vine­gar, + more to taste
– Kosher salt and ground black pep­per, to taste

Drain the tuna, and flake lightly with a fork in a bowl. Add the fen­nel, onion, pars­ley, capers, and beans and gen­tly mix. Fold in the may­on­naise and red wine vine­gar until well com­bined, then sea­son to taste with salt and pep­per. Add more vine­gar if desired. Refrig­er­ate until ready to serve.

More and more lately, Cal foot­ball games seem to be start­ing at 4 p.m. Food wise, it’s an awk­ward time, far from lunch and too early for din­ner. What we’ve been doing is pick­ing up a sand­wich at Gen­ova Del­i­catessen on Tele­graph Avenue then eat­ing it when we get to Memo­r­ial Sta­dium an hour or so before the game starts.

Gen­ova is an Oak­land insti­tu­tion. It was opened at 50th and Tele­graph by Ital­ian immi­grants Lorenzo Balbi and Peter Tira in 1926. Orig­i­nally, it was a gro­cery store and ravi­oli fac­tory, which catered to this pre­dom­i­nantly Ital­ian area called Oakland’s Temescal dis­trict. In 1951 Dominic De Vicenzi came to work there and mar­ried the owner’s daugh­ter. In the mid-1960s a sec­ond store was opened in Wal­nut Creek, which is now run by De Vicenzi’s nephew. Due to “ fam­ily dif­fer­ences,” the two busi­nesses are sep­a­rate enti­ties with Dominic own­ing the Oak­land deli and another in Napa. In 1995, the deli moved from its orig­i­nal loca­tion to Vern’s Shop­ping Cen­ter, a strip mall on Tele­graph near 51st Street. It’s across the street from Piz­zaiolo, which cooks fab­u­lous pizza from local ingre­di­ents in their wood-fired oven.

Along with fan­tas­tic sand­wiches, the deli also sells imported Ital­ian foods, pasta, and wine. In the back is a bak­ery and salad/antipasti bar. The sig­na­ture sand­wich is the Ital­ian Combo—a freshly baked roll filled with mor­tadella, galentina, cotto salami, dry salami and pro­volone cheese and cov­ered with fresh veg­eta­bles. Molto bene!