Ben Gollan: A Man and His Sandwich
An Australian-born New Yorker might just be the city’s next Sandwich King.
When Ben Gollan boarded a plane headed from Sydney, Australia to New York City in 2016, he didn’t know how different his life would soon look. Gollan left Sydney as a crisply-dressed lawyer for the Australian government and came to New York to support his wife’s new position at the Amazon subsidiary, Audible. But soon, his life was defined by meeting people from around the world, hosting heated debates on the philosophy behind a sandwich and laughing more than he had in his first three decades… all in the name of sandwiches.
Gollan, now 37, is a veteran host of Airbnb Experiences, which are “one-of-a-kind activities hosted by inspiring local experts” such as a Chinatown food tour with a chef and a graffiti workshop in Brooklyn. Gollan’s sandwich tour, A Sandwich Feast, was rated the number one Airbnb food tasting experience in New York City and involved taking sandwich-loving guests on a two-hour walking and tasting tour of what Gollan says are the best sandwich places in the East Village. The tour is one of four that Gollan hosts, including an online Sandwich Masterclass that has ended up being his main source of income during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
The behind the scenes setup of Gollan’s online classes is meticulous and very 2021. He has his iPhone on a tripod with a bright ring light, and a laptop on the counter near the tripod so that he can see and chat with his guests. His guests don’t see the flurry of planning, they just see a clean, modern kitchen with red accents, ingredients like prosciutto and olive tapenade neatly placed in small bowls on top of a wooden cutting board in front of him and a framed print of his personal hero, Anthony Bourdain hanging just behind his head, almost as if Bourdain is watching over Gollan and guiding his hand. During a recent Sandwich Masterclass on a dreary afternoon, Gollan took to his Manhattan kitchen while his guests, some from thousands of miles away, scanned the room from side to side.
“I have to admit I am not the world’s best chef, but I honestly don’t think you have to be the world’s best chef to make a good sandwich,” Gollan said, kicking off his class with a grin, his long shirt sleeves casually rolled up.
Gollan’s sandwich career got its start when he travelled to New York for vacation in 2014. Overwhelmed with the abundance of things to see and do, he decided to tackle the city in the way that made the most sense to him: as an “exploration via sandwich.”
“As a kid from Australia, New York is huge. It’s massive. It’s scary. So, I figured that if I did it by neighborhood, by sandwich, that was more digestible,” he said.
Gollan grew up eating sandwiches on white Wonder Bread made up of ketchup and Devon, a processed sausage popular in Australia and New Zealand. This simple meal sparked a lifelong passion for sandwiches.
“In hindsight, it was terrible. The bread was pink because of the ketchup by the time you ate it, the Devon was slimy for the same reason — and I loved it. I had it everyday,” he said with a wide smile. “I’ve always loved sandwiches. I don’t know what it is.”
As Gollan grew up, his sandwich skills and taste for more exotic flavors grew with him.
Ben was in charge of lunch duties at home, and used this as an opportunity to show his true talents in the art of sandwich making, his brother Matt remembers.
“He’d make my dad lunches. And my dad’s colleagues at work would be like, ‘Holy shit, is that a duck breast sandwich with cucumber, and hoisin sauce?’”
Years later, during his sandwich exploration quest, Gollan came across the sandwich that changed things for him and inspired him to start his food blog, A Man and His Sandwich, which was first only read by his friends and family. The sandwich, which Gollan holds is still one of his favorites in the city, was a pastrami sandwich from Harry and Ida’s Deli, a brother and sister-run deli in the East Village that has since closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The sandwich included pastrami, buttermilk fermented cucumbers, fresh dill and mustard on an anchovy infused crusty roll.
“It was unbelievable. Like, the amount of different processes they put their ingredients through, the textures, the flavors. And it was not small either, which was great”,” Gollan said.
Upon returning to Sydney, Gollan continued to blog and even wrote for some local Australian publications about sandwiches. By the time Gollan relocated to New York City in 2016, for his wife Georgia’s new job, the A Man and His Sandwich blog was already a couple of years old.
Around this time, after 10 years of being “content” in his job as a lawyer in Australia, he was considering a shift away from the profession toward perhaps sports management because he wasn’t truly fulfilled.
“I was doing privacy law, and everyone else around me at the privacy office loved it. Like privacy was so important to them,” said Gollan, “It was a human right for them, they’d tell me. And I couldn’t quite muster up that same enthusiasm.”
He was further pushed in that direction because Gollan couldn’t practice law in New York.
“I think if Georgia and I had stayed in Australia, we probably would have had kids by now because that’s kind of the thing that you do. So, that would have been even more incentive to stay in that position because you know, stability and all that.”
Moving to New York in support of his wife’s new job was something Gollan looked forward to, despite what this meant for his career.
“Georgia’s crushing it. I want her to crush it. And, moving to America, man, she’s gonna crush it even more. It’s not me giving up anything. That’s just what needs to happen,” he remembers thinking.
Though leaving law behind was something Gollan looked forward to, his transition to New York still wasn’t easy, as he and his wife Georgia Knox remember.
“I couldn’t open a bank account because I didn’t have a job here and I couldn’t get a job because I didn’t have the proper visa,” said Gollan, “It was just all of this, like one little thing after another.”
“It was tough. It was really tough. But the one thing that was always consistent, was this love of sandwiches from what he’d done when we’d previously spent a couple of months here,” Knox said.
Gollan had been looking for jobs in New York City for a couple of months when a friend who worked in public relations asked him to show a few clients around “to see what was hot in food.” Soon after doing this favor for his friend in 2017, Airbnb Experiences launched and Gollan realized that this simple favor might be a good fit for the experience platform. He applied and was accepted as one of the first Airbnb Experiences in New York City.
Now, almost four years later, Gollan has become an expert at what he does. His online Masterclass is doing well with more than 550 reviews and a rating of 4.98 stars. Last year, the global pandemic forced Gollan to reimagine new ways of adapting his business by moving online. Gollan was surprised that he was able to expand his audience to groups he hadn’t considered. At first, Gollan mostly had individuals joining his online class, but soon, corporate groups sought him out, especially around the holidays, when remote teams needed a fun replacement for holiday parties.
This summer, as the COVID-19 vaccine rollout accelerates, Gollan anticipates lower attendance for online classes like his. However, Gollan predicts that his corporate audiences won’t change as much.
“Corporate groups are really hypersensitive to COVID and precautions. And so, I imagine from Monday to Friday, when the corporates are in session, I’ll be pretty busy with those,” Gollan said.
A major part of what is making Gollan’s class so popular among digital travellers and corporate types goes beyond the guests’ shared love for sandwiches, and extends to Gollan himself.
“Ben’s inviting personality made the hour an absolute treat,” wrote one user. Another wrote, “He brings an outstanding vibe and energy to the class, cracking many jokes along the way.”
Candice Johnston, another Airbnb user who attended Gollan’s class with her husband back in February, spoke of her first impressions of him.
“He’s so easy to connect with,” Johnston said. “He just seems like a genuine person. I feel like his personality would be the same on or off camera.”
Gollan’s ability to engage others in conversation stems from his hatred of talking about himself; he finds it to be “unnatural.”
“I’m trying to learn to be more outspoken [about his achievements],” said Gollan, “I don’t even like saying that I’m humble because I feel like a wanker by saying that.”
Gollan attributed his humility to growing up in Australia, where he believes there is more of a reserved culture. His brother, however, doesn’t appear to share this reason.
“I get a promotion at work and I’m like, ‘look at me, I just got a promotion. How fantastic is this?’, But my brother is just very reserved about talking about himself,” Matt said.
Even though Gollan is not one to sing his own praises, the loved ones in his life have no trouble doing it for him.
“He’s very dependable, he’s just very thorough with both his work,” Gollan’s friend and business partner, Raf Ignacio said. “And you know, if he says something, he’ll do it.”
Gollan’s family and friends believe that he has the makings of a next big food personality with his own sandwich driven television show.
While a show is not in the works just yet, Gollan has still been pursuing other ventures. Along with Ignacio and another business partner, Gollan has been working on building his new business, Spark’n, an online platform that will deliver 15 minute ‘out of the box’ virtual experiences to corporate teams, including one he hosts himself on his “Is a hot-dog a sandwich?” debate, which he is known for.
There is a belief some share that when children are young, they know who they are, but once they grow up, they get sidetracked and then spend the rest of their lives trying to remember exactly who that person is. Gollan recently received this reminder from his mother.
“When I was a little kid, she would ask what I want to do when I grow up and I apparently used to answer ‘something which just lets me talk,’”said Gollan. “I’d forgotten that. It’s funny that I ended up being a tour guide.”
Disclaimer: This story was last updated on March 28, 2021.
