“There are 200 million sandwiches eaten a day in America”, according to Australia’s Ben Gollan. One might say he’s a sandwich aficionado, and he’s not shy to admit it, remarking on a beautiful New York autumn afternoon, “the Sandwich is a global dish that beings people together, which is why I do this tour and why I love what I do.”
His captive audience are the participants of the tour Ben runs through his company A Man And His Sandwich, seeing the Sydney native spreading his infectious passion to the streets of New York. The tour started as a hobby, and he has been doing it for seven years now, running up to two daily tours between Thursday and Monday.
The two-hour tour starts appropriately at the Bluestone Café, a chain of Australian coffee shops that you’ll find around North America. Here, Ben sets the tone for the afternoon – asking us for our own opinions on “what constitutes a sandwich”, while he regales its dictionary definition, “…an item of food consisting of two pieces of bread with a filling between them, eaten as a light meal.”
His argument, and ultimate raison d’etre for the tour, is that this definition is very much open to interpretation. Is a hot dog a sandwich? Does it even need bread? Would you call a wrap a sandwich? These are the questions he wants you to answer – though he insists there is no right or wrong answer.
Every tour is a little different – he rotates through up to ten spots in the East Village, each showing off a different style of “sandwich”, with three spots on each tour.
Our sandwich run started at Factory Tamal, a hole in the wall in the East Village. This is emblematic of another goal of our host – to encourage people to explore the “mom and pop shops”; the holes in the wall where some of the most authentic food can be found in any city. This store in particular had a great story, where its proprietors started selling tamales on the side of the road in Queens, which grew into the business they run today.
Paninis were a more recent addition to the menu, and Ben said these were his favourite paninis in the whole city. The ones we tried were filled with black forest ham, mozzarella, caramelised onions, pickled jalapenos and sun-dried tomato aioli. They were perfectly pressed, and apparently not too dissimilar from the classic sandwich that the Earl of Sandwich invented in the 1600s. Though I can’t vouch for the statement that it’s the best in town, I certainly came to trust Ben on the subject, and they were delicious.
We continued on foot to our second location, 7th Street Burger. You’ll see these all over the city now. They emerged, funnily enough, during the pandemic, in July 2021 at 1st Ave and 7th. Ben rates these as the best smash burgers in the city, “burgers the way God intended… greasy and delicious”. And clearly he’s not the only person to feel this way, with the company exploding to 18 locations around the city in a little more than three years.
As the East Village location didn’t have any seating, we were taken around the corner to Craft and Carry to enjoy a beer alongside the burger. He continued to impart his knowledge of both the history of sandwiches, and the East Village, as we drank and ate the delicious smash burger. And we all agreed that the burger was a sandwich – not that this was ever in question; after all (as we learned from Ben), burgers were originally called Hamburg Sandwiches, before America’s first burger franchise White Castle changed it to the “hamburger”. Naturally, there’s some debate over these origins, but I’ll let Ben’s version have the final word for this article.
After walking through Tompkins Square Park – where we learned about a Halloween Dog Parade that was about to take place – we were taken to our final stop, Sunny and Annie’s Deli. From the outside, you wouldn’t expect this bodega, open 24/7, would be offering anything special. But inside it quickly becomes apparent that this is no ordinary deli.
Here we would enjoy a Pho wrap – that is the ingredients of Pho, sans the soup, all wrapped up for easy consumption. Whether or not you agree that a wrap is a sandwich, he certainly proved his point that the intent of the Earl of Sandwich – which was to find a way to easily eat fillings while gambling (in his case) – remains true with the wrap. This time, we enjoyed the wrap while we drank at ABC Beer Co, not far from Sunny and Annie’s. And both the meal, and the beer, were truly a treat. There are few things I love more than a good fusion meal.
“I love how accessible and diverse Sandwiches are… there’s a big nostalgia with them for me”, Ben told us as we finished our wraps, before handing us a bingo card featuring the best sandwiches in New York. It’s impossible not to leave Ben’s tour wanting to discover them all. His enthusiasm is infectious. And regardless of whether he’s changed your mind on what constitutes a sandwich, you’re going to leave richer for the knowledge, fuller for the delicious meal(s) and hungry to explore New York City and all his culinary riches.
For more details on the tour, which runs from Thursday to Mondays, head to his official website, or look out for the tour on Airbnb. You can also follow on Instagram @amanandhissandwich.
Photos by the author unless otherwise credited. The author joined as a guest of the tour in October 2024.
