NYC’s new ‘It food’ with nearly 1 billion TikTok views to prove it

Published

2 years ago

September 1, 2023

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Once seen as a staple of the American poor, sardines have hit their gill-ded age.

TikTok’s tinned fish trend has hit a fever pitch; #Sardine and #Sardines have a combined 831 million views as plenty of canned food enthusiasts brag about being “Sardine Satisfied” while munching on the slippery suckers.

And just in time for an explosion of “Girl Dinner” and “Sardinecore,” an acclaimed Portuguese sardine monger has touched down in NYC to sate the ever-growing canned fish craving with boutique seafood including fish adorned with gold.

Those willing to take the bait can visit the Fantastic World of the Portuguese Sardine on the corner of Broadway and 48th Street, the flagship US store in a Portuguese chain with 20 outlets.

The Post visited the preserved seafood merchant, which opened last Friday, to see if it was truly the sardine gold standard.

“One of our goals with our trip to the US is to kind of bring the Americans our fresh food,” Joana Quaresma, the Fantastic World’s project manager and Lisbon native, told The Post of their mission.

The epicurean ambassador added that she wanted to spread her native delicacy of sardines in olive oil to the “amazing stage” of Times Square, where tourists are infamously always packed in like sardines.

Walking into the venue, still in its soft opening stage, is like stepping into an epicurean toybox stuck out of time: There are painted figurines, staffers in old-timey sailor’s outfits, and of course, two stories of shelves the upper tier are accessed via sliding library ladder bearing multihued sardine cans like a veritable Fort Knox of fish.

Cans which run $15 for four ounces are arranged “chronologically” from 1916 to the present and feature events and famous birthdays for that year.

But don’t worry, Quaresma assures us those weren’t the actual years they were tinned they “don’t want to put customers in danger,” she says but rather a way to “get people’s attention.”

In fact, most expire after around seven years so, jettisoning any dreams of hunkering down at “Fantastic World” come a nuclear apocalypse or enjoying “Lazy Girl Meals” until the end of time.

Inside are scrumptious filets of sardine baptized in copious olive oil and compiled at a factory in Alvaro that’s been around since 1952 allegedly the only place in Portugal that still preps and packs the fish “by hand.”

The aforementioned date trend aims to spread this haute cuisine to the US, where unlike in Europe, sardines have long been synonymous with “low-end eating.”

“Fantastic World” couldn’t have come at a better time: Sardines have taken social media by storm with tin-fluencers such as Danielle Matzon amassing millions of views by binging on this upwardly mobile eat-on-camera.

The soaring demand for this so-called “hot girl food” as dubbed on Reddit even caused a nationwide tinned seafood shortage in January.

It becomes this gourmet snack that literally took five minutes to put together, Matzon claimed while describing the food’s appeal.

Of course, tinned fish have been a fixture in Europe for some time perhaps this is another instance of Zoomers “discovering” things that have been around forever.

In fact, the seafood obsession has jumped from the food to the fashion sphere with the arrival of Bottega Veneta’s Sardine handbag and celebrities from Ana de Armas to Lily Allen rocking nautical-themed attire over the past year.

Seemingly with Instagram in mind, Fantastic World offers a special Ouro Portugues, a $44 gold ingot-shaped (this shape is patented) tin with three ounces of sardines flecked with edible gold flakes of the variety found in Goldschlger. It evokes Willy Wonka’s golden ticket bars but for fish-philes.

“We usually recommend this for a special occasion,” said Quaresma. “This is not for everyday, obviously this is very good for a gift, but you want to show some dedication and that you want people to have a special moment with this.”

After trying this ritzy “goldfish” first-hand, it’s delicious but not vastly different from the standard date-bearing versions, only that it’s meticulously skinned and deboned and perhaps a bit lighter and airier. It was a cool gimmick that ultimately felt a bit like throwing rims on a Volvo: more stylish but with the same destination.

The highlight was watching my 7-year-old sister “pan” for gold flakes with a Carr water cracker.

One of the best offerings is the moist and smoky “Sardinia Asada” with sweet peppers and onions, a canned version of the charcoal-grilled sardines traditionally eaten at Lisbon’s Santo Antonio festival on June 12 aptly dubbed the Festival of Sardines.

This was the fishmonger’s way of condensing this vibrant experience in a brightly decorated can, which features scenes from said festival on the cover, for New Yorkers.

Along with sardines, the Fantastic World also does Bacalhau, the flaky and savory dried and salted cod that is a staple of Portuguese cooking.

Next week, the fishmonger will have all 18 varieties of tinned fish, including sole, salmon, octopus, whelk, mussels and “Mediterranean sea bass” (actually branzino, a white-fleshed fish that’s ubiquitous at Greek and Italian restaurants in NYC).

They even have a cookbook detailing how to pair sardines with every type of cuisine from Portuguese to Chinese.

One downside is the steep prices at Fantastic World, whose lease is up in ten years.

At the very least, the store presents a rare boutique beacon in the kitschy labyrinth of Elmo impersonators and “I Love NY” T-shirt vendors that Times Square is comprised of.

World

Inside Iran’s notorious Evin Prison – as Tehran says damage shows Israel targeted civilians

Published

1 hour ago

July 4, 2025

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Inside Iran's notorious Evin Prison - as Tehran says damage shows Israel targeted civilians

It is one of the most notorious and secret places in Iran.

Somewhere foreign journalists are never allowed to visit or film. The prison where dissidents and critics of Iran’s government disappear – some never to be seen again.

But we went there today, invited by Iranian authorities eager to show the damage done there by Israel.

Evin Prison was hit by Israeli airstrikes the day before a ceasefire ended a 12-day war with Iran. The damage is much greater than thought at the time.

We walked through what’s left of its gates, now a mass of rubble and twisted metal, among just a handful of foreign news media allowed in.

A few hundred yards in, we were shown a building Iranians say was the prison’s hospital.

Behind iron bars, every one of the building’s windows had been blown in. Medical equipment and hospital beds had been ripped apart and shredded.

It felt eerie being somewhere normally shut off to the outside world.

On the hill above us, untouched by the airstrikes, the buildings where inmates are incarcerated in reportedly horrific conditions, ominous watch towers silhouetted against the sky.

Evin felt rundown and neglected. There was something ineffably sad and oppressive about the atmosphere as we wandered through the compound.

The Iranians had their reasons to bring us here. The authorities say at least 71 people were killed in the air strikes, some of them inmates, but also visiting family members.

Iran says this is evidence that Israel was not just targeting military or nuclear sites but civilian locations too.

But the press visit highlighted the prison’s notoriety too.

Iran’s critics and human rights groups say Evin is synonymous with the brutal oppression of political prisoners and opponents, and its practice of hostage diplomacy too.

British dual nationals, including Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe were held here for years before being released in 2022 in exchange for concessions from the UK.

Interviewed about the Israeli airstrikes at the time, Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe showed only characteristic empathy with her former fellow inmates. Trapped in their cells, she said they must have been terrified.

The Israelis have not fully explained why they put Evin on their target list, but on the same day, the Israeli military said it was “attacking regime targets and government repression bodies in the heart of Tehran”.

The locus of their strikes were the prison’s two entrances. If they were trying to enable a jailbreak, they failed. No one is reported to have escaped, several inmates are thought to have died.

The breaches the Israeli missiles made in the jail’s perimeter are being closed again quickly. We filmed as a team of masons worked to shut off the outside world again, brick by brick.

Environment

Tesla prototype sparks speculation: a Model Y, maybe slightly smaller

Published

1 hour ago

July 4, 2025

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Tesla prototype sparks speculation: a Model Y, maybe slightly smaller

A new Tesla prototype was spotted again, reigniting speculation among Tesla shareholders, even though it’s likely just a Model Y, potentially a bit smaller, and the upcoming stripped-down, cheaper version.

Over the last few months, there have been several sightings of what appears to be a Model Y with camouflage around Tesla’s Fremont factory.

It sparked a lot of speculation about it being the new “affordable” compact Tesla vehicle.

There’s confusion in the Tesla community around Tesla’s upcoming “affordable” vehicles because CEO Elon Musk falsely denied a report last year about Tesla’s “$25,000” EV model being canceled.

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The facts are that Musk canceled two cheaper vehicles that Tesla was working on, commonly referred as “the $25,000 Tesla” in early 2024. Those vehicles were codenamed NV91 and NV92, and they were based on the new vehicle platform that Tesla is now reserving for the Cybercab.

Instead, Musk noticed that Tesla’s Model 3 and Model Y production lines were starting to be underutilized as the Company faced demand issues. Therefore, Tesla canceled the vehicles program based on the new platform and decided to build new vehicles on Model 3/Y platform using the same production lines.

We previously reported that these electric vehicles will likely look very similar to Model 3 and Model Y.

In recent months, several other media reports reinforced this, and Tesla all but confirmed it during its latest earnings call, when it stated that it is “limited in how different vehicles can be when built on the same production lines.”

Now, the same Tesla prototype has been spotted over the last few days, and it sent the Tesla shareholders community into a frenzy of speculations:

Electrek’s Take

As we have repeatedly reported over the last year, the new “affordable” Tesla “models” coming are basically only stripped-down Model 3 and Model Y vehicles.

They might end up being a little smaller by a few inches, and Tesla may use different model names, but they will be extremely similar.

If this is it, which is possible, you can see it looks almost exactly like a Model Y.

It’s hard to confirm if it’s indeed smaller because of the angle of the vehicle compared to the other Model Ys, but it’s not impossible that the wheelbase is a bit smaller – although it’s hard to confirm.

Either way, the most significant changes for these stripped-down, more affordable “models” are expected to be cheaper interior materials, like textile seats instead of vegan leather, no heated or ventilated seats standard, no rear screen, maybe even no double-panned acoustic glass and a lesser audio system.

As previously stated, the real goal of these new variants, or models, is to lower the average sale price in order to combat decreasing demand and maintain or increase the utilization rate of Tesla’s current production lines, which have been throttled down in the last few years to now about 60% utilization.

If this trend continues, Tesla would find itself in trouble and may even have to close its factories.

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