This Bay Area man has eaten 700 sandwiches. Here’s what he liked least

Every day, Barry Enderwick makes a sandwich for lunch. 

For most people, this would not be a notable event. But the 55-year-old San Jose resident has an audience of more than 300,000 TikTok followers watching him do it. 

Enderwick, who worked in marketing at Netflix in its formative years, has always been a fan of sandwiches but has no formal food background. He is, however, “naturally a ham” and likes to entertain, he said. Sandwiches of History was born when his friend gave him a book called the “Up-To-Date Sandwich Book,” which was published in 1909. 

“I thought it’d be interesting to try these recipes from long ago and see if our modern palate aligned with them,” he said, sitting at his dining room table wearing one of his signature printed button-downs. “Like were the flavors that they enjoyed something that we would enjoy?”

Enderwick has been drawn to interesting flavor combinations his whole life — as a kid, his favorite sandwich was a peanut butter and pickle sandwich. Since then, his sense of culinary adventure has only escalated. For example, he’s actually a fan of the aforementioned 1936 peanut butter and vegetable sandwich.

“What ends up happening is the peanut butter kind of gets knocked down,” he said, since it’s mixed with water and mayonnaise. “It’s not a super strong player, so it’s a nutty, sort of savory note with the vegetables and it works.”

Other old-timey recipes have yielded less satisfying results. One particular horror he recalled was actually the first Sandwiches of History video he ever made: a raw oyster sandwich from the 1909 cookbook. 

“Oh my God, it’s one of the worst sandwiches ever,” Enderwick said. “Slimy, gross, terrible. And I like raw oysters but that is just not what you should do with them.”

The most offensive sandwiches tend to stick in his memory better than the good ones, but there have been some very good ones, too. His favorites include the tomato sandwich from New Orleans restaurant Turkey and the Wolf and the pan bagnat, a French tuna sandwich filled with salade niçoise ingredients. He makes so many sandwiches at home that he rarely goes out for one, but when he does, he loves a falafel sandwich from San Jose institution Falafel’s Drive-In or a mushroom sandwich from Dad’s Luncheonette in Half Moon Bay. 

Enderwick originally started posting his sandwich videos on Instagram, but quickly switched over to TikTok when the platform started taking off in the US in 2018. His account went viral almost immediately. 

“In real time, I could see the numbers ticking up and it was just like, what the heck is going on here?” he said.

Enderwick remains surprised and mildly amused at his popularity (on getting approached by fans in public, he said, “Some folks are nervous, which is bizarre to me because I’m just me”), but he does have a few theories as to why his content resonated. For one, he’s consistent: He posts a new video each day at noon, and ends each video with a dependable, “See you tomorrow!” 

But more importantly, in an onslaught of TikTok dances and flashy editing designed to grab your attention, Enderwick keeps it casual. 

“I’m just like, hey, let’s make a sandwich,” he said. “It almost feels counter to what a lot of social media is.” 

Watching a Sandwiches of History video does feel like a warm hug for the social media-rotted brain. To observe a middle-aged man with a wry sense of humor carefully prepare a sandwich, chew thoughtfully and then share his honest feelings on it feels exactly like taking a big bite of your favorite sandwich: comforting and satisfying. 

Behind the scenes, Enderwick’s filming process is as straightforward as it seems. On the day we visited his San Jose home, he was recording a video in his kitchen about a bacon and egg sandwich from the 1917 book “Salads and Sandwiches” published by Woman’s World Magazine Co. 

His setup was humble: a camera on a tripod sitting atop a stack of shoeboxes on his kitchen counter. As he filmed, a cat water fountain tinkled in the background. His wife, Christine, watched in the wings, offering a word of encouragement when he second-guessed his outro. 

A crucial element to each Sandwiches of History video is the “plus-up.” After Enderwick tries a recipe as written, he then shares an idea for how to improve it: hot sauce, seasoning, pickles, etc. As a result, the door of his fridge is a cornucopia of every condiment imaginable, “much to Christine’s chagrin,” joked Enderwick. 

One fun side effect of running a popular sandwich-reviewing empire is that fans are always sending him condiments. And historical cookbooks, too. While Enderwick finds a lot of his old recipes in the Internet Archive, he also has around 30 or 40 dusty tomes and pamphlets stacked up in his kitchen to flip through for inspiration.  

“It’s funny, when I first started someone said, ‘What are you going to do when you run out of sandwiches?’” Enderwick recalled. “I’m like, the ‘Up-To-Date Sandwich Book’ has 400 recipes in it alone … I’m not going to run out anytime soon.”

Even if he did somehow run out of recipes from American history, Enderwick has also expanded his account to include historical international sandwiches, such as Rou Jia Mo, a Chinese sandwich dating back to 200 B.C. He also now features a series called “Sandwiches of Our History,” in which fans share the unique recipes from their own family history. 

Enderwick is also about to add some of his own recipes to the sandwich canon. In early October, he announced he’s working on a cookbook slated to come out next fall.

“So a lot of the old books, the instructions for them are not well-written, and they could also use a little something here and there,” he said. “So basically it’s going to be a reinterpretation of those recipes, and then I’m also going to suggest plus-ups.”

The deadline for the cookbook is tight — Jan. 15 — so Enderwick will be writing and recipe-testing through the holidays, all the while still making Sandwiches of History videos. Fortunately, his day job at a consulting firm is currently in a lull, he said, so he can treat writing a cookbook as his full-time job. 

Despite the spoils of fame (the chance to write a cookbook, getting recognized at Whole Foods), Enderwick maintains that his life as a TikTok star is still pretty normal.

“It’s not like, oh man, now I’ve got sponsorship deals, I’m flying all over the place,” he said. “… But I do buy a lot more bread than I used to.”

And somehow, through it all, he hasn’t gotten sick of sandwiches. 

“I just love cooking and I love eating and I love experimenting with flavors,” he said. “… And you can always just grab a sandwich and go somewhere.”