Cheryl Dagostaro (Courtesy photo)
Food, North Part

Cookbook by North Park Entrepreneur Focuses on Sandwiches with a Side of Classic Rock

By Frank Sabatini Jr.

By the time Cheryl Dagostaro closed her Classic Rock Sandwich Shoppe on North Park Way last year, she had created a menu flaunting 101 different sandwiches—each named after famous rock musicians of the 1960s and 1970s.

During the decade it operated, she amassed a formidable collection of classic-rock memorabilia that dominated the interior walls. The displays attested to her longstanding passion for the likes of The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Stevie Wonder, The Rolling Stones, and anything connected to the legendary Woodstock Music Festival in 1969.

Dagostaro recaptures the concept in her new, trademarked cookbook: Classic Rock Sandwiches. It features recipes and photos of every sandwich that was offered on her menu, not to mention the homemade condiments and sprightly salads. Among her crave-worthy sandies are the “Rockin’ Joplin” tuna sandwich with “Bobby McGee spread,” and the “Sultry Stevie” rotisserie chicken sandwich, which pays tribute to Stevie Nicks with its sexy pineapple-habanero sauce.

We caught up with the sandwich queen last month just as some finishing touches were being applied to her book, which we are betting will shake up our repetitive rotation of sandwich ideas.

Downtown Condo Guys: What led you into closing the sandwich shop?

Dagostaro: Everyone thought it was because of Covid. But it wasn’t. It was a combination of working on other projects and needing to move on to other things. By nature I’m an entrepreneur. I also run Pet-Tenders, which I started 40 years ago. And I’m a notary. For 10 years, the sandwich shop overlapped with the pet-sitting business. I was working 90 hours a week and didn’t sleep.

Downtown Condo Guys: Were you a sandwich aficionado before launching the eatery in 2011?

Dagostaro: My opening the restaurant back then had nothing to do with sandwiches and everything to do with the musicians. I actually hated sandwiches my entire life and wanted to figure out why. It wasn’t until I started designing my own sandwiches that I came to love them.

Downtown Condo Guys: And the reason for your past aversion to them?

Dagostaro: My problem was that 98 percent of the sandwiches I ate wherever I went were always the same. Since I don’t eat beef or pork, eight out of 10 of them were that. They all had anywhere from only 2 to 4 spreads—the usual mayo and mustard, or if you were lucky, honey mustard. Or if you were really lucky, chipotle mayo.

So when a friend of mine got a job in a sandwich shop, I thought, ‘I can design sandwiches’, and I started pressing forward to open the shop as a way to honor the classic rock musicians who I love. In my research for opening the shop, I ate at about 25 sandwich places within a 10-mile radius from North Park. Out of those 25, I wouldn’t have gone back to 23 of them.

I basically came to love sandwiches after I started making them myself with different spreads and filling combinations.

Downtown Condo Guys: When did your love for classic rock begin?

Dagostaro: The Beatles took my life over when I was 12 years old. From the Beatles came The Stones, The Animals, Stevie Wonder, Eric Clapton, and others.

I’m originally from New Jersey, and when I was 16, a boyfriend called me up and said, ‘I’m going to this festival in the town of Woodstock, NY.’ He asked me to go with him. He was pretty wild, and I had strict Italian parents, so I couldn’t go. But I ended up watching all of the festival on TV. It was then that my obsession with classic rock got worse.

Downtown Condo Guys: Did you use any particular formula for matching certain sandwiches to certain musicians?

Dagostaro: I tried to feel the vibe of the musicians when creating the sandwiches. For example, whenever I thought of Steven Tyler from Aerosmith, I knew he had to be named after a ham sandwich because he reminded me of showman—a ham, so to speak, but not in the negative way.

Or for Stevie Nicks, it took me a while to design a sandwich that would represent her as sweet and spicy, which is how I always viewed her. So I came up with the Sultry Stevie with rotisserie chicken, avocado, Provolone and pineapple-habanero sauce in the middle. There’s also a spread of habanero-mayo on it.

Downtown Condo Guys: Why “101” sandwiches?

Dagostaro: It was always my goal at the restaurant to have 100 sandwiches on the menu. The reason why it turned out to be 101 in the end was that I had miscounted. They are all in the cookbook, each with a photo that I took in the year before closing. I also include 17 salads, which I had named after cities and areas that were important in the 60s and 70s, such as Woodstock, Haight-Ashbury, Liverpool, New York, etc.

Downtown Condo Guys: What was your best-selling sandwich?

Dagostaro: The Beatle Maniac. They flew out of the shop. Once people ate it, they didn’t want to try anything else. It’s made with turkey, avocado, mixed greens, tomato and raspberry-chipotle sauce.

Downtown Condo Guys: Do you assign specific breads to the sandwiches?

Dagostaro: No. I would give people a choice of breads for the sandwiches except for the ‘tower’ sandwiches because we had to go with larger-width breads for those.

Downtown Condo Guys: What happened to all of that authentic memorabilia you had in the shop?

Dagostaro: I sold a lot of it when I was closing the restaurant. It was important for me to sell it at cost, so that people would have a collectible from the shop as well as a wonderful photograph of an artist they loved.

Downtown Condo Guys: Where can we buy a copy of the cookbook?

Dagostaro: It will soon be available at 99sandwiches.com and Verbatim Books on 30th Street in North Park. I’ll also have it on my Instagram page (@classicrocksandwichshoppe).