From pho-inspired wraps to a Pakistani-style chopped cheese, a writer tastes the many flavors that shape NYC on a sandwich tour through the East Village.

Getty / Airbnb / Arati Menon

“By the end of our time together, I will be asking you again: ‘So, what is a sandwich?’”

An expert-led tour that starts by questioning its own object of inquiry is unconventional. But then, so is our guide. Ben Gollan, known to his Instagram followers as A Man and His Sandwich , has spent the last nine years reviewing sandwiches across New York City . Gollan moved here from Australia in 2016, after nearly a decade as a government lawyer. For about as long, he has run an Airbnb Experience that turns a food crawl into a two-hour pilgrimage to the city’s best sandwich slingers .

It was a pastrami sandwich at Harry & Ida’s, a former deli in the East Village, that turned Gollan into a professional sandwich hound.…