More Than a Sandwich, in AstoriaEddie Sosa is on a mission. He wants to build bridges between people, to show them how alike they are at the end of the day. And he’s using the sandwich as his vehicle. Sosa, who’s Colombian, Cuban, and Puerto Rican, grew up in Queens Village with foodie parents in the 1980s. He started cooking at age 4 with his grandma, was working in restaurants by age 13, and mostly learned by paying attention to chefs, and asking kitchen staff to teach him dishes. “I was enamored by the kitchen guys,” he says. He’d get obsessed with a cuisine and spend weeks working on it at home. Dinner parties were frequent. All the while, he held a series of jobs, pursued his other lifelong passion of recording hip-hop music, and ultimately worked, for almost 17 years, as an elevator mechanic. Fast-forward to early 2024, when his son’s baseball team needed to raise money for a tournament in Cooperstown. Sosa had been playing around with pork shoulder and a Cuban sandwich for years. He decided to make and sell that sandwich and two others, which he workshopped with tastings at his house. “Subconsciously I started telling people stories about these sandwiches that were like my childhood,” he says. “Everyone said the same thing: ‘It was amazing, but that story thing was brilliant.’” The fundraiser was a huge success, and Sosa quickly got a reputation, much to his surprise. Super Bowl orders came in; suddenly he was prepping 200 sandwiches. People asked him where his restaurant was, what was his deal. “I’m like, I’m the elevator guy, I got nothing,” he says, laughing. It’s safe to say Sosa has transitioned to being the sandwich guy. With his wife’s support, he quit his job. After a few false starts landing a location, as of two weeks ago, he’s operating Sosa’s Sandwich Shop as a pop-up at Sala Astoria (34-39 31st Street) every Monday through Friday, 11am-3pm, for at least the next few months. He has 11 different sandwiches, each thoughtfully built on housemade bread, each with a story to tell. There’s “That Cuban,” which started it all. It’s the best Cubano we’ve had in recent memory: juicy, three-day-marinated and grilled pork shoulder layered with ham, melty Swiss cheese, crisp pickles, and yellow mustard, pressed in a housemade hero. He grew up eating these, but shares the story of Charlie, who worked at a deli on 179th Street in Queens back when he was a teenager and used to ride the F train home after hanging out at clubs downtown. Charlie would make him and his friends Cubans in the middle of the night, and they loved it. The delicious “Jamaica Ave.,” a flaky, meaty beef patty (made in-house with oxtail and ground chuck) tucked inside housemade coco bread with mozzarella cheese, is an elevated homage to what he grew up eating on Jamaica Avenue. “The Mole de Mama”–pork mole with avocado, tomato, Oaxacan cheese, and papalo on toasted bread likewise made with mole–is inspired by his partner in the kitchen, Chef Nicolás, who’s from Guerrero. “The Shelly,” a Korean BBQ slider, is on the menu thanks to a good Korean friend and fellow parent named Shelly, who’d make these for all the kids. “The Tandoori Murgh,” tender yogurt-marinated chicken over housemade sourdough naan with mint chutney and pickled shallots, pays tribute to Indian neighbors he had as a child in Queens Village. “Most of these things you cannot get anywhere [else] because I just made them up,” he says. “I have a million stories to tell, but they have to be right.” Sosa expects the menu will rotate as he incorporates new ideas, but won’t exceed 10 or 11 sandwiches. He wants to launch a dessert brand called Carolina’s Confections, inspired by his daughter (yes, there will be dessert sandwiches!). And while he has more stories of his own to tell, he wants to hear other people’s stories too–possibly a new sandwich will come out of it. “Being in Queens, we’ll get to everyone’s culture over the years,” he says. His passion is contagious, his stories are engaging, and the sandwiches are very, very good. But Sosa hopes his customers connect the dots between his food and humanity itself. “I want people to understand that we are one. It’s a weird time right now, but there’s far more similarities than there are differences. You know what I mean?” he says. “It’s OK to be different. It’s OK to disagree. Eat the food.” —LSR
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