Food has always been a passion for Owen Han, who first connected by learning with his grandmother in her kitchen in Italy and then watched his Chinese father take over the family kitchen in Sarasota.
Those early lessons prepared him well for an unexpected turn in a career he knew would revolve around food.
Han, a 2016 graduate of Sarasota’s Out of Door Academy, has become a viral sensation amassing more than four million TikTok followers who watch his videos putting together simple and elaborate sandwiches.
In quick cuts, there are shots of him slicing or preparing meats, chopping vegetables, preparing bread or wraps, making sauces, and engaging with various friends or legendary chefs like Martha Stewart and Padma Lakshmi or such celebrities as Paris Hilton.
The videos are short, with heightened sound effects so you hear the crunch as he slices through toasted baguettes and the squirt of mayonnaise or the slosh of his homemade sauces and toppings.
His experiment began during the pandemic and has now led to his just-published book “Stacked: The Art of the Perfect Sandwich,” written with Rick Rodgers, from Harvest Books.
He was scheduled to return to Sarasota for a visit with students and parents at ODA and a signing at Bookstore1Sarasota before Hurricane Milton forced the events to be rescheduled for a date still to be determined.
Han said that his Sarasota home was often a center of gatherings for his family and friends, and he knew early on that he wanted to pursue some kind of career in food. His father was the late pianist Derek Han , one of the founders of the La Musica International Chamber Music Festival in Sarasota. He died in 2021
Finding a way to make a living in food
“I looked at my eighth-grade pamphlet, where we had to write what we wanted to be, and I wrote that I wanted to own a Chik-fil-A,” he recalled. He later realized “how hard of an industry that is.”
He studied nutrition in college so “I was still working with food but understanding nutrients and how that affects people,” he said.
Different experiences changed his career direction and he writes that his social media success came just a year out of college “in the midst of transitioning from one entry-level job I didn’t care about to another I cared even less about.”
Han is as surprised as anybody by how people have responded to his online content.
“When I take a moment to reflect to see where it’s gone to, it’s really a surreal thing for me. It was my dream as a kid to be able to find a job in food and find out what it is. I say now it’s a dream job,” he said. “I get to work with food for a living, making my own hours. I never expected it to get to this level. I was first posting purely for fun and sharing what I like to do. I didn’t think I’d be able to make a living at it.”
Shrimp Toast changed his life
His food is inspired by his Italian and Chinese heritage, and he became an almost instant hit with his first video making a shrimp toast recipe from his father’s mother.
“I posted it and my roommate H Woo Lee, a content creator who found success on TikTok posting recipes, encouraged me to post it. I decided to post this, and it quickly had a couple of hundred thousand views,” Han said. “I posted a few random recipes, a salmon dish, a pasta dish.”
And then he posted a video of his OG Spicy Chicken Sandwich, which was the first to break one million views. And then came the steak sandwich, the one on the cover of the book. That was the first to go to 10 million.
“That’s when I decided to make sandwiches be my thing. After the third sandwich, I decided to just do this full time,” he said.
He doesn’t have to think about how to make some of the sandwiches he films, but others are more of an experiment of mixing ingredients, spices and other flavors. Han keeps busy every day working on new content. Some days involve filming, while others are focused on editing or sound effects.
Sound is what sets his videos apart. He writes that the shrimp toast recipe didn’t include the typical list of ingredients and a recipe. “It focused on sound. The chef’s knife slicing through and pounding shrimp until it's smushed to paste; the cracking of an eggshell, then the yolk plopping down atop water chestnuts, celery, scallion and cilantro.”
His videos allow the viewers to hear the flavors while imagining them.
“I wanted to capture the audience’s attention,” he said in the interview. “To me, that’s one of the best ways to do it.” He discusses his methods in the tech talk part of the book and says he uses a Rode microphone “connected to whatever device you’re using and move it to whatever sounds you're recording. I basically get it as close as possible."
A little star power
He still doesn’t quite believe some of the people he’s met or worked with. “Growing up and idolizing and watching these people on TV and now to meet and cook alongside them, it’s such an unexpected part of this job. You see how they are in person and to be able to share that space is amazing. Even when it’s not necessarily a chef, like Paris Hilton, they’re always fun.”
And he’s learned the reason many of them are successful is because they are being themselves.
“The best way to find success is being your authentic self and doing what you love,” he said.
Back to his roots
Han remains a big booster for ODA and he was looking forward to meeting and talking with students and doing a cooking demonstration with the parents at night, an event that will be rescheduled.
“It has a special place in my heart. I’m an ODA lifer. I was there from kindergarten until I graduated,” he said. As a student he was active in sports, playing football, soccer and lacrosse. “When I’m there, I have to make sure I have time to pop into a soccer practice,” he said.
He still knows “a lot of the faculty there. It’s such a small school. There were just 40 kids in my graduating class so it really feels like family and coming home was a no-brainer when we were putting together the book tour.”
Now that the book is out, he’s looking forward to expanding his work, producing longer format videos whether for YouTube or television “to show more of my personality, show more of what I can cook besides sandwiches,” he said. “If you watch my content, they’re 30-second clips where I’m not even speaking. It will be cool to expand and branch out.”
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This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Sarasota grad Owen Han now sandwich-making TikTok star and cookbook author
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