If It’s Stacked, Eat It: Meet TikTok’s Sandwich King, Owen Han

Owen Han didn’t know how much the Internet loved sandwiches when he posted a TikTok video of grilled chicken, bacon, smashed avocado, and chipotle mayonnaise between two slices of sourdough bread one day in summer 2021.

But he soon found out.

“It was my first video to exceed a million views,” says Han in his studio in California, US, where a large kitchen takes up most of the small, tidy space, equipped with a six-burner stove with integrated cooker. in a griddle, more knives and pans than some restaurants and a deli-style meat slicer.

“The way it happened was a bit by chance,” he says. “I was planning to film a cioppino, which is a fish stew. It takes a long time, has a lot of ingredients, and I was feeling a little lazy, so I was like, “You know what? Let me just film making my lunch.

Three years later, Han has 4.3 million followers on TikTok, 2.2 million on Instagram and nearly 800,000 devoted fans on YouTube. His first cookbook, Stacked: the art of making the perfect sandwichwas released by Harvest in October, when he also embarked on a coast-to-coast tour of the United States.

And he’s just returned from cooking at a pop-up in Ibiza, Spain, and a cheese-making tour in Oregon, USA with Tillamook, one of several brands courting him for content .

Han is known as the sandwich king of TikTok. — Photos: GÉNARO MOLINA/TNS

Even by TikTok standards, which have created a new equation for fame, Han’s rise has been meteoric. Based on the success of this “chicken-bacon-avo sando,” “I said to myself, let me try another one, which turned out to be the steak sandwich, which is on the cover (of the book by recipes), and which has exceeded 10 million views. I was like, wow, this is crazy. People love sandwiches and I also love sharing my passion for sandwiches,” shares Han.

He followed it up with a breakfast sandwich.

“And then from there, people were already calling me “the sandwich guy.” That sounds pretty good,” Han says modestly.

He was already the King of Sandwiches.

It’s a comfort thing

And that was just the beginning. His tomahawk steak sandwich has reached nearly 13 million views on TikTok. Chicken tikka wrap: 16.6 million. Open ham and cheese: 24 million. Beef shawarma wrapped in laffa: 52.3 million (more than the entire population of South Korea).

Tall and dark, Han barely speaks in the majority of his videos. They almost always start the same way: he crushes the sandwich, cuts it with a smooth slice or a smashing chop, takes a big, crispy bite and flashes a big smile. And while quick edits and ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) aren’t new to social media, the way he slaps cold cuts and splatters sauces on bread obviously resonates with his audience.

Han’s TikTok page features so many delicious sandwiches. -OWEN HAN/TikTok

Why do people love sandwiches so much? “I think ultimately it’s about comfort, it’s such a comfort food,” Han says. “I mean, tons of memories come to mind,” including his Italian grandmother’s pan e Nutella and the sandwich of the day at his high school cafeteria in Sarasota, Florida.

“I loved the cafeteria staff. I remember very well that Friday was tuna melt. Thursday was burger. No matter what was served, I always got the sandwich.

Born in Milan, Italy, and raised in Florida, Han spent his summers with his grandmother in a small village in the mountains of Tuscany, without WiFi until recently. “So there wasn’t much to do other than hang out outside, run around or watch Nonna cook,” he says.

“And I was a much bigger fan of staying in the kitchen with her.”

Pasta was the first thing he learned to prepare, and Nonna – along with Han’s Shanghainese father – instilled in him a passion for food, particularly her cucina povera: sugo di pomodoro, stracotto (roast), carbonara, braised turkey with vegetables and wine. , pizza from its outdoor oven.

She enrolled him in a cooking class at a local restaurant, but he is otherwise a self-taught chef who studied economics and nutrition at the University of Southern California. After college, he landed a job as a “nutrition ambassador” at a hospital in Los Angeles. “That’s a fancy way of saying I delivered food to patients and took their orders,” he says.

On Han’s kitchen book shelf, his paternal grandmother’s copy of Recipes: Chinese Cooking sits next to the cookbook he wrote called Stacked: The Art Of The Perfect Sandwich.

It was at this moment that his life took a turn. In April 2021, his father – a former concert pianist who helped spark Han’s passion for cooking – died from Covid-19. Han writes in his book that after his father’s death, returning to his job “…where I was constantly surrounded by families undergoing similar trials and suffering was extremely difficult. At that time, a typical workday consisted of crying for hours in the bathroom while neglecting my work.

His roommate at the time, H. Woo Lee, would post cooking videos on TikTok, and because Han loved cooking, he encouraged him to do the same. “I really owe him for encouraging me to start,” Han says.

“I had an Instagram page at the time, but I was too embarrassed to post food content,” says Han. “Because there were 800 people I know who followed me, I was like, ‘I’m not going to embarrass myself there.’ So I went to this new platform, TikTok.

Among the first videos to go viral was shrimp toast, based on a recipe from his Chinese grandmother’s cookbook, passed down from his father. He picks up the stained, barely bound copy of Recipes: Chinese Cooking from his kitchen bookshelf (which also has a trophy reading “Sandwich King Owen Han,” a gift from Bon Appétit personality Brad Leone). and shows where she wrote. “chopped celery (sic) leaf” on the page.

“She made some changes here,” he said.

By the time his first chicken sandwich reached a million views and the first brands contacted him, he had quit his hospital job, turned down an offer to work in operations at Roscoe’s Chicken & Waffles in Hollywood and had decided to concentrate full time on sandwich content.

Is lasagna a sandwich?

One day in August, he is at the stove stirring the tomato sauce for polpette, a Nonna recipe. But “Nonna has never made meatball subs,” Han says. “I doubt she knows what a meatball sub is.” Until he filmed a video of doing one with her in Italy this summer.

“She was really weird eating (meatballs) in a sandwich. But she said, “It’s actually really good.”

Nonna’s meatballs are particularly tender, held together by milk-soaked bread (rather than traditional breadcrumbs or panko) and beaten egg. One of the keys to a good meatball sub is not to overdo it, Han says. “No one likes soggy bread.”

Han has cooked and directed videos with Nonna, Giada De Laurentiis, Martha Stewart, Alex Guarnaschelli and Padma Lakshmi. When he explained to Stewart his broad definition of a sandwich – any stackable ingredient with a flour/bread component – ​​“She was quick. She said, “Does that mean lasagna is a sandwich?”

But you can’t eat lasagna with your hands, I answer.

“Yes,” Han said.

A simple tomato sauce is part of Han’s Nonna’s meatball sandwich. — Photos: GÉNARO MOLINA/TNS

THE Stacked The cookbook includes recipes for tacos, burgers, burritos and wraps, a quesadilla, chicken and waffles, as well as more traditional sandwich styles that are both classic and inventive. (But no lasagna.)

By tapping into his Italian and Chinese heritage and drawing inspiration from social media, “I’m not out of ideas yet,” says Han, who estimates he’s made nearly 1,000 sandwiches since becoming an “influencer.” self-proclaimed sandwich” and keeps a running list of ideas on his phone.

“It’s definitely a fear of mine, but if I ever find myself in a bind or lacking inspiration, I’ll just do it. …There are times when I literally wake up from a dream or a nap, and I have an idea and I just add it to this tab.

Asked about critics of TikTok’s cooking content who point out that the 30-second videos are more entertaining than informative, he responds: “I completely agree. There are educational elements in the short videos, because if you slow them down or watch them enough times, (you) get the gist.

But, he says, he was inspired to write a cookbook in part because he gets comments and DMs (direct messages) with recipe requests. “I wanted to share my story and my recipes with people.”

Her cookbook proposal stood out because Han is “authentic, charming, really loves cooking and comes naturally,” says Harvest editor Sarah Pelz. With his fan base, “he has a direct connection with them. We’ve seen this with authors who have large social media platforms. I think readers feel like they know this person. So there is a very personal connection” that publishers cannot create for authors.

That’s what propelled B. Dylan Hollis’ Baking Yesteryear, which makes retro recipes like Kool-Aid pies and chocolate syrup cakes, to the top spot on the New York bestseller list Times.

Other cookbooks from TikTok creators that have climbed the bestseller list include An unapologetic cookbook by Joshua Weissman and The Korean Vegan by Joanne Lee Molinaro.

The next frontier for Han is YouTube, he says, where he has experimented with a few cooking series. One of them is Ciao Chow – “like Italian ‘ciao’ and Chinese ‘chow’” – with Han mashups such as Bolognese dan dan. The other is My Nonna Knows, in which Han consults with his grandmother via FaceTime and she rates her interpretations of classic Italian dishes.

“I definitely want to continue putting out long-form content on my YouTube,” he says. Once the book tour is over, he plans to make YouTube his main focus and come up with another series.

“At the moment I don’t even speak in my (social media) videos, so it’s a great way to let the audience see a different side of me, and then also experiment. And show that I can cook more than just sandwiches. – By BETTY HALLOCK/Los Angeles Times/Tribune News Service