A Salady Sandwich and a Sandwichy Salad
From the internet's leading purveyor of Sandwich Positivity!
I WON’T LIE: I’ve wondered now and then if dedicating my remaining years on the planet to salad isn’t a bit. . . neurotic.
In fact, I was thinking that very thing quite recently, just after I got thisclose to ordering stools for my kitchen that look like giant corn cobs and giant mushrooms and giant pineapples and a tomato lamp, so that my surroundings really say “salad.” I still might, but my point is that, sure, being fixated on salad might be healthier than hanging around in an opium den, but dialing it back a notch or two wouldn’t be so terrible.
That was before I encountered a man on social media named Barry W. Enderwick, whose obsession with sandwiches—especially sandwiches of the past—absolutely dwarfs my own preoccupations.
I spent an enormous amount of time watching reel after reel on his of extremely popular Instagram feed, Sandwiches of History, about such sandwiches as the Soft Shoe Swinger from 1977, the Walter Winchell from 1959, the Monterey from 1952, the Peanut Butter and Chili from 1939, the Corn Omelet from 1936, and the Walnut Tunawich from 1965. And then I watched some more.
Now this guy, I told myself, he’s the one with the problem.
I had to meet him!
“I don’t feel like I have the credentials to pull off a long-form sandwich video,” Enderwick told me, during a Zoom conversation, when I asked about his format, which is short, sweet, and to the point. He makes a sandwich, usually from a vintage cookbook (although he occasionally does modern day sandwiches, too, including on International Sandwich Sundays, and sandwiches of the future, generated by ChatGPT). He tastes the sandwich. He rates the sandwich. And he’ll often do what he calls a “plus up”—adding a flavor and/or texture element to a vintage sandwich to bring it up to date for modern palates.
But I’ll have to disagree on the lack of credentials issue until you show me someone with a mind for sandwiches more impressive than Enderwick’s. Since he started, back in 2018, he’s given close to 700 sandwiches the SoH treatment, while continuing his work as a branding/marketing executive. (He’s the former original director of marketing at Netflix, and is now a partner at Kaizen Creative Partnership, in San Jose, where he lives with his wife, Christine.)
And during our Zoom conversation, Enderwick appeared to have a photographic memory for all of them—the year they were invented, exactly which book they came from, the ingredients, and whether or not he liked them. I realized that what I knew of Barry Enderwick was only the tip of the frilled sandwich toothpick.
He’s a multi-platform guy, who, in addition to his 157,000+ followers on Instagram, has an even bigger sandwich-seeking audience on TikTok (306,600 followers). He’s on YouTube, which is where all of this started—but with potato chips. (He also explores ice cream and craft beer, but all to a much lesser degree.) Here’s his umbrella website for all of it. And, I’m happy to say, he has a Substack coming soon.
Years ago, “I was posting reviews of interesting sounding potato chips on Facebook, just a picture and a paragraph,” Enderwick told me; a friend suggested he do a vlog, and he did, three times a week, first on YouTube, then on Instagram and TikTok. It was fine.
But that same friend later sealed his glorious fate as a sandwich influencer when he sent him a PDF of “The Up-To-Date Sandwich Book” of 1909. “I thought: this would be pretty fun to do. And he’s not going to do it.”
Enderwick’s subsequent multi-platform sandwich presence officially started in 2018, but Sandwiches of History didn’t really take off until 2021, during the pandemic, when he started posting every single day on TikTok. He climbed from zero to 221,000 followers in the next seven months.
But Enderwick is not your typical influencer. He’s not trying to sell you anything. He’s not dancing or doing tricks or pulling stunts or criticizing anyone or being the least bit controversial, unless you get upset by patterned or floral shirts, which he wears in almost every reel because “I want to fight back against the tyranny of plaid men's shirts,” he told me.
“I’m just a guy in my kitchen making a sandwich,” he said.
It sounds like a pretty utilitarian endeavor. But Enderwick’s respect and regard for sandwiches—which are a beacon of light in this dark world, the dish we all make when we just can’t think of what else to do or have no energy for anything else—is infectious and somehow uplifting. “By and large, the folks that follow me are positive. . . . So I just love them,” he said.
And knowing that Enderwick will be there every day, making a sandwich for them, is part of the reason his audience—which includes food and television stars, who have popped in as guest hosts—adores him back. Let’s call them the sandwich positivity people.
“I want this to be kind of like a little snack that people get, a video snack, if you will,” he said. “A little break for them.”
They repay him by sending him vintage sandwich books, photos of recipes, photos of cookbook covers that might interest him.