The One-Man-Show Making & Delivering NYC’s Hottest Sandwiches

[gentle music]

I opened Salvo's, an Italian sandwich shop,

out of my apartment in Queens,

delivered via GO-4 Interceptor.

Salvo's began kind of by accident.

I had posted something online

that said, I'm gonna be selling this food now.

And since opening less than a year ago,

I went from a couple customers

to selling about 50 sandwiches a week.

The different hats I wear, shop-prepping, cooking, packing,

delivering, dispatcher, customer service, graphic designer.

Why I do everything is because I don't know

that you're not supposed to do everything.

I don't come from the industry.

[gentle music]

Hey, good morning.

I'm Sal, owner of Salvo's Cuchina Casalinga.

It's about 8:00 AM

and we got quite a few sandwiches to make.

So we're gonna get started.

You wanna follow me up.

[gentle music]

Welcome. [chuckles]

This is our workspace, my home kitchen.

We're gonna get a couple of sandwiches going.

The first we need to prep is a Genovese sandwich.

This is sort of inspired by my childhood.

Traditionally, it's ground beef

in a sweet carrot and onion sauce.

My family always had it as an entree.

So we're gonna cook beef loin

and then slice it just as we did when I was a kid,

and start browning it.

Just a couple minutes on each side

just to get a nice color

and color will translate as deliciousness.

Yeah, my home kitchen.

It's not restaurant-grade stuff.

Salvo's does have food handlers license.

But we got like a home stove here,

just a regular refrigerator here.

It takes a bit for an object to find its place,

but it works.

And this is also the way

that I've been cooking my whole life.

It's the way that my mom has been cooking, my grandmother.

Everyone in my family who I've learned to cook from

cooked in kitchens just like this,

so it works great for me.

So while this is browning,

we're gonna get started on prepping our onions and carrots.

At the beginning of the week,

Salvo's announces a few sandwiches.

Today's the Genovese sandwich as the special.

The mortadella is kind of a fan favorite.

So we're doing that as well today.

[meat sizzles]

When I was starting off, it was pretty much

whatever I was eating for lunch is what I was gonna sell.

Meat looks nice and brown.

We're gonna take it out.

So we're gonna add our onions here,

and these are gonna wilt quite a bit

and get nice and sweet, nice and creamy.

So we're gonna get our carrots now.

Working from the home kitchen

definitely has its his puzzles.

It kind of looks like a deli's fridge.

So there's a bit of the refrigerator that's kind of reserved

for personal consumption.

But for the most part, Mary and I were eating

what I'm making for Salvo's anyway.

Mary is my lovely girlfriend,

super supportive of having me run my business

out of my home kitchen, our home kitchen.

Yeah, I lucked out.

Monday is my big prep shopping day.

I'll pick everything up that I need for the week,

do about three delivery days per week.

Traditionally, deglaze a Genovese with white wine.

I don't have any today

so I'm gonna use some delicious Faccia Brutto.

Just a splash of this goes in.

[upbeat music]

So the time is 9:15,

we're gonna order a courier to pick up the bread.

Get our bread from this bakery

from across town called Otway Bakery.

'Cause originally I was driving across town

in the GO-4 to pick it up.

There's just not enough time to do that.

A wonderful Uber driver

who thinks they're picking up a package of sorts,

it's gotta make their car smell pretty good though.

I just changed my phone to Italian

'cause I wanna get better at my Italian,

so I'm kinda schooling myself right now.

Dang, we got surge, we got surge prices here.

I've also baked some of my own bread in the past.

A friend of mine told me like there are people out there

who make delicious bread

and they're gonna make bread better than you.

So if you can just find those people, it's, you know,

it's a win-win for everyone.

So, that's kind of one of the things that I'm finding

is like I can't do it all.

It takes about a half hour to be picked up

and then dropped off here.

So I like to start making the sandwiches

an hour before the first delivery.

We're gonna bring the meat back over here.

And then in addition to that,

we're gonna add some chicken stock.

This made Sunday or Monday.

Toss in a couple bay leaves.

Touch of salt.

This is kind of like the secret ingredient,

it's called salsa secca which translates to dried sauce.

This is from the region of Palermo in Sicily

where my dad is from.

In like the scorching August in Sicily,

they'll lay out, on tables the passata

and then over a couple days it dehydrates naturally

from the air and the sun.

And you're left

with this super, super concentrated tomato paste.

That is delicious.

I thought like maybe I could, you know,

dehydrate a bunch of sauce,

but the amount of sauce that you need,

there's just no space for that.

And that's gonna just add a whole bunch of depth and flavor.

Everything is just about added.

So now we're just gonna let it cook for about three hours.

[upbeat music]

It's 9:45 and we're waiting for the bread to get here,

so we're gonna get started on the pesto in the meantime.

The first step of course is the basilico, basil.

The pesto adds a bit of acid, a bit of brightness to it.

So about half a garlic, garlic goes a long way in pesto.

And I'm gonna add some mint as well.

For this Ninja, I had a blender.

It definitely like helps, especially if I'm working alone

to even chop a couple of of things

so I don't have to be doing that.

We're gonna add one, maybe two anchovy filets.

This doesn't make the pesto taste fishy,

it just creates a nice, nice flavor.

A bit of pepper, a lot of olive oil.

Right now I've been using Nostimo olive oil, which is Greek.

I actually found out about them through Salvo's,

through making deliveries.

I deliver to a customer.

Their family has a grove in Greece.

Been using some of their olive oil recently.

Super delicious.

[blending whirring]

Well then we're gonna add Pecorino Romano

and I like to add a few breadsticks.

This adds a nice crunch to the pesto and to the sandwich.

[blender whirring]

Cool, that's pretty much it.

Leave this in the fridge until we're ready

to make the mortadella sandwiches.

The time check's about 10:00 AM,

we're gonna start thinking about next week's menu.

It's all handwritten and then posted on Instagram.

So most people have found out

about Salvo's through Instagram.

I'll post something the week of and I'll announce a menu.

People can send their pre-orders

for the day that they select.

Think I wanna do next week prosciutto, mozzarella,

and marinated peppers.

After the mortadella, it seems like the prosciutto

is sort of a fan favorite.

So this sandwich has reappeared in a few different versions.

The prosciutto kind of being the the main ingredient.

So that would be for Wednesday I'm thinking.

And then for Thursday,

I think a Sicilian style tuna salad would be nice,

especially as the weather's getting warmer.

I do this labor intensive, handwritten menus

because it feels really, really warm and friendly.

If I'm nerding out,

this is in like letters inspired by my father's handwriting.

So I tried replicating, yeah, his handwriting a bit.

I'm gonna check bread arrival time

and it looks like they're right out front.

So we're gonna grab our bread.

Yeah, they're right out front.

Hey, how's it going?

Thank you.

Have a nice day.

Cool.

[bag crinkling]

Got our fresh bread, baked not even an hour ago.

They delivered ciabatta for today.

The ciabatta is my absolute favorite, especially for panini.

Huge open pockets absorb olive oil, in this case a pesto.

It's super light and soft on the inside.

Crusty on the outside, exactly what you want.

I have listed that there's a stock of 20 of each sandwich,

so that kind of helps me keep track of how much I need to,

I need to buy, how much I need to cook.

And there's no food waste

because I know everything is being sold.

Here's a list of orders that need to go out today.

We have quite a bit today.

So it's 10:45.

We have a dozen mortadella panini to make today.

Cut our bread, toss in some mortadella, our pesto,

mozzarella di bufala, imported from Campania.

The most delicious mozzarella

comes from this region of Italy.

I remember the first time I tried it

was in a gas station in Italy.

After we arrived from the airport, we were driving back

to my uncle's house where we were staying and we stopped.

That was like the first stop, we had to hit it.

It's delicious stuff.

It was a dream of mine to have a deli slicer

in my own kitchen.

Then we have freshly sliced mortadella.

Next thing after the basil, I wanna add the mozzarella.

It's beautiful, super creamy.

[upbeat music]

Add grated Parmesan.

And then finish it off, a bit of our lemon zest.

[upbeat music]

That's one panino finished. We have just 11 left.

This like deli style folding took me a while to learn.

Cut it here and then a secondary.

[paper crinkling]

And this blue tape was like one of the first ideas I had.

The color of Napoli, where my mom's from.

This was just like a simple homage

and it like quickly became synonymous with Salvo's,

which is kinda cool, the blue tape.

And then into the cooler it goes.

And then we do the whole thing over again.

[upbeat music]

It's noon, the Genovese finally ended cooking,

so it's time to build our second sandwich.

First thing we're gonna do,

take some of the carrot and onion

and kinda cook it down in the skillet.

So it becomes a little thicker.

The longer we cook it, the creamery gets.

I want it to have the consistency of a jam.

For the Genovese sandwich, the star is obviously our meat.

And then our carrot and onion jam.

And then for cheese, I'm thinking Fiore di Sardegna,

sheep's milk cheese and it's slightly sharp, very creamy.

This is always like a little puzzle,

figuring out where everything goes.

It's all here though.

Our jam is ready to go.

Just gonna add a touch of honey for added sweetness.

First we add a little bit of our jam.

Next goes our slices of Genovese.

And then our Fiore di Sardegna to finish it off.

[upbeat music]

Another in the cooler.

It was my dad's when he was working as a laborer.

Luckily we have the same name.

So it says Salvatore, so that was pretty cool.

It's 12:30, done with the sandwiches. They're all packed up.

It's time to load them in the GO-4.

This crazy thing is a 2013 GO-4 Interceptor.

I bought it off of some mechanic in Greenpoint.

It's essentially a scooter with a roof on it.

So it keeps me warm in the wintertime.

Keeps me dry on rainy days.

This does not go on the highway.

It reaches a max of 40 miles an hour

and when it does, it just like shakes a bunch.

It becomes scary real quick.

And I think it makes a lot of people happy,

seeing it in the street, a loud, fun, strange machine.

Time to make our deliveries.

[engine revs]

First stop is in Bed-Stuy.

The GO-4 is a pretty good cheat code

for riding around in New York City.

I can kinda fit it anywhere. You can park it anywhere.

When you're riding down one way streets

and the road could be blocked off

by a garbage truck or something,

the GO-4 can usually squeeze by pretty easily.

Since I started doing the deliveries on my bicycle,

I pretty much knew a lot of the roads,

a lot of the streets, a lot of the cross streets,

especially in Brooklyn and Queens.

It's pretty cool.

A lot of that is still memorized.

I use a lot of those routes.

All right, we're coming up to our delivery.

Down any second.

Hey, what's up?

Here's your mortadella.

And then I have, do you like pasta fagioli?

Yeah.

Yeah, I have pasta fagioli here.

Excellent. Enjoy.

Thanks so much, dude. Cool, thank you.

Yeah.

Sweet and the next spot we're heading to is Rita & Maria.

It's a cafe in Bed-Stuy.

Actually became pretty good friends with them.

They're awesome people.

A lot of the times pop up there.

So I host these dinner pop ups. It's usually Sunday suppers.

Lunches are a lot of fun,

but there's a whole other opportunities

when it comes to making dinners.

So Rita & Maria, you know, they gave me a sort of a venue.

I think the most rewarding part about running Salvo's

is making people happy.

It's also like how I show that I care,

cooking food and feeding people.

And it's just really nice for that to be reciprocated

and people to understand that food is important,

food is happy, food is fun.

Thank you so much for following me today.

I got a few more deliveries to make, so we'll see you later.

[gentle music]