How TikTok’s ‘Sandwich King’ lives, breathes and dreams about his extraordinary creations

Meet food influencer Owen Han, whose passion for making culinary magic with bread has earned him millions of loyal followers on social media

Reading Time:4 minutes

Dubbed “The Sandwich King” on TikTok, Owen Han has millions of followers across social media for his ASMR-style food videos. Photo: Brendan North

Published: 7:15am, 17 Jun 2024

In an age when “social media influencer” is one of the top career aspirations for young people, Owen Han is living a Gen Z dream.

Dubbed “The Sandwich King” on TikTok and Instagram – where his @owen.han accounts have 4.3 million and 2.2 million followers, respectively – the 25-year-old American influencer is known for quick-cut, ASMR-style videos in which he assembles and then devours the most extraordinary-looking sandwiches.

Many of his recipes are riffs on classics but informed by his Chinese and Italian heritage.

And a few are better described as sandwich-adjacent, as was the case with the very first video he posted online – on TikTok in July 2021 – featuring his Chinese grandmother’s shrimp toast, a traditional Cantonese appetiser that he topped with a spicy Korean gochujang mayonnaise.

Han’s Chinese grandmother’s shrimp toast recipe was the first video he posted online. Photo: Ren Fuller

Within two hours, it had more than 250,000 views, and today Han is one of the biggest names in food social media.

He is also one of the few influencers who has managed to cross over to other platforms, with an appearance on British chef Gordon Ramsay’s Food Stars reality show in 2023 and the publication of his recently announced first cookbook.