Why is the internet so attached to the TikTok sandwich king?

Owen Hahn had no idea how much the internet loved sandwiches when he posted a video on TikTok Grilled chicken, bacon, crushed avocado and chipotle mayonnaise between two slices of sourdough bread one day in the summer of 2021. But he quickly understood.

“It was my first video to get over a million views,” Hahn says in his studio in Venice, where a large kitchen takes up most of the small, tidy space, equipped with a six-burner stove with built-in hob and more knives and plates than some restaurants and a cold cuts court.

“The way it happened was kind of a coincidence,” he says. “I was planning to photograph cioppino, which is a fish dish. It takes a long time, it has a lot of ingredients, and I was feeling a little lazy, so I was like, ‘You know what? Let me film my lunch.’”

Three years later, Han has his followers. 4.3 million on TikTok, 2.2 million on Instagram and almost 800,000 devotees youtube fans. He first cookbook“Stacked: The Art of Making the Perfect Sandwich,” will be released by Harvest on Oct. 15, when he embarks on a coast-to-coast tour. And he just returned from cooking at a pop-up in Ibiza and going on a cheesemaking tour in Oregon with Tillamook, one of the many brands he’s recruiting for content.

Even by the standards of TikTok, which has created a new equation for fame, Han’s rise has been meteoric. Based on the success of that chicken, bacon and avocado sandwich, “I thought I’d let myself try another one, which was a steak sandwich covered in (cookbook) cover and it got over 10 million views. I was like, wow, that’s crazy. People love sandwiches and I love sharing my passion for sandwiches.”

He followed that up with a breakfast sandwich. “And from there, people started calling me ‘the sandwich guy.’ It sounds pretty cool,” Hahn says modestly.

He was already the Sandwich King.

“It’s a matter of comfort”

And that was just the beginning. Her tomahawk steak spike has nearly 13 million views on TikTok. Chicken tikka dip: 16.6 million. Ham and cheese spread: 24 million. Laffa-wrapped beef shawarma: 52.3 million (that’s more than the entire population of South Korea).

Han is tall and dark-skinned and barely speaks in most of his videos. They almost always start the same way: He flattens the sandwich, slices or dices it, takes a big bite, and smiles widely. And while quick edits and ASMR are nothing new on social media, the way he slathers cold cuts and spreads sauce on bread is sure to resonate with his audience.

Why do people love sandwiches so much? “I think it’s a comforting thing, it’s comfort food,” Hahn says. “I mean, I have a ton of memories,” including Grandma’s plate of Italian Nutella and sandwiches in her high school cafeteria in Sarasota, Florida. “I loved the cafeteria staff. I remember very clearly that on Friday it was the tuna melt. On Thursday it was the burger. No matter what they served, I always had a sandwich.”

Born in Milan, raised in Florida, Hahn spent summers with his grandmother in a small town in the Tuscan mountains and, until recently, had no Wi-Fi. “So there was nothing to do but spend time outside running around or watching Nonna cook,” he says. “And I was more of a stickler for staying in the kitchen with him.”

Pasta was the first thing she learned to cook, and Nonna, together with her Shanghainese father Han, instilled in her a passion for food, especially cucina povera: sugo di pomodoro, stracotto (roast), carbonara, turkey with vegetables and mulled wine, pizza from their outdoor oven.

She signed him up for a cooking class at a local restaurant, but he is a self-taught chef who studied economics and nutrition at USC. After graduating from college, he worked as a “food ambassador” at a Los Angeles hospital. “For me, it’s a beautiful way to deliver food to patients and take their orders,” he said.

That’s when his life changed. In April 2021, his father, a former concert pianist who helped spark Hahn’s passion for cooking, died of COVID-19. Han writes in his book that after his father’s death, he returned to his job “where he was always surrounded by families facing similar hardships and pain. Back then, a typical workday consisted of crying for hours in the bathroom and neglecting my work.”

His roommate at the time, H. Wu LeeHe posted food videos on TikTok and encouraged Han to do it because he loved cooking. “I really owe it to him for encouraging me to start,” Hahn says.

“I had Instagram back then, but I was too shy to post food content,” Han says. “Since I knew 800 people followed me, I thought, ‘I’m not going to embarrass myself there. ’ So I went to this new platform, TikTok.”

Among the first videos to go viral. shrimp toastbased on a recipe from a Chinese grandmother’s cookbook passed down to her by her father. She pulls a scaled-down, barely-bound copy of Recipes: Chinese Cooking off her kitchen shelf (there’s also a trophy that says “Sandwich King Owen Hahn,” a gift from Bon Appetit personality Brad Leone) and points to where she wrote the page “chop celery leaves (sic).” “She made some edits here,” she says.

When his first chicken sandwiches received millions of views and the first brands came his way, he quit his job at the hospital, turned down an offer to work in operations at Roscoe’s Chicken & Waffles in Hollywood, and decided to focus full-time on the stuff in the sandwich.

Is lasagna a sandwich?

On the last day of August, he stands in front of the stove, stirring tomato sauce. for meata recipe from Nonna. But “Nonna never brought meatloaf,” Hahn says. “I doubt she even knew what meatloaf was.” Until she started filming beat it this summer in Italy.

“It was really amazing eating (meatballs) in a sandwich But she said: “It’s really good.”

Nonna’s meatballs are especially tender and are rolled in milk-soaked breadcrumbs (rather than traditional breadcrumbs or panko) and beaten eggs. Hahn says the key to a good steak is not too much. “Nobody likes soggy bread.”

Han cooked with Nonna and made a video. Giada De Laurentiis, Martha Stewart, Alex Guarnaschelli and Padma Lakshmi. When he explained his broad definition of a sandwich (any stackable ingredient with a flour/bread component) to Stewart, “he was quick. He said, ‘Does that mean lasagna is a sandwich? ’”

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

—Yeah, got it, —Han says.

The “Stacked” cookbook includes recipes for tacos, burgers, burritos and wraps, quesadillas, chicken and waffles, as well as more traditional sandwich styles, both classic and innovative. (But no lasagna.)

Han, who draws on her Italian and Chinese heritage and inspiration from social media, says she has “not run out of ideas yet.” She estimates she has made nearly 1,000 sandwiches since calling herself a sandwich “influencer” and keeps a running list of ideas on her phone.

“It’s a fear I have, but if I ever run out of ideas or lack inspiration, I just look for it… There are times when I literally wake up from a dream or a nap, get an idea, and just add it to that tab.”

Asked about criticism of TikTok cooking content that 30-second videos are more entertaining than instructional, she says: “I totally agree. There’s an instructional element to short videos, because if you watch them at a slower speed or watch them enough times, you get the gist of it.”

But, she says, the inspiration for the cookbook came in part from the comments and emails she receives asking for recipes. “I wanted to share my story and my recipes with people.”

Her cookbook launch was notable because Hahn is “genuine, charming, really loves to cook and comes naturally to it,” says Harvest executive editor Sarah Pelz. With her fans, “she has a direct connection with them. We’ve seen this with authors who have big social platforms. I think readers will feel like they know this person. So there’s a very personal connection” that publishers can’t make with authors.

That’s exactly what B. Dylan Hollis’s work aims to do, as it makes retro recipes like Kool-Aid cakes and chocolate syrup cakes, which hit number one on the New York Times best-seller list. Other cookbooks by TikTok creators have made the best-seller list, including Joshua Weissman’s The Extraordinary Cookbook and Joan Lee Molinaro’s The Korean Vegetarian.

The next frontier for Han is YouTube, he says, where he has experimented with several cooking series. One is Ciao Chow – “like the Italian ‘ciao’ and the Chinese ‘chow’” – with Han exercises like dan dan Bolognese. The other is “My Bread Knows,” in which Han consults with his grandmother via FaceTime and evaluates her interpretations of classic Italian dishes.

“I definitely want to continue streaming long-form content on my YouTube channel,” she says. Once the book tour is over, she plans to turn her attention to YouTube and host another series.

“Now I don’t even speak my language (social media) videos, so it’s a great way for viewers to see and then experience a different side of me. And show me that I can make more than just sandwiches.”

See Owen Hahn LA Times Food Bowl Making Nonna’s meatloaf sandwich on Saturday at 9:10pm