Ask who invented the chopped cheese and Blue Sky Deli — the 24-hour bodega at First Avenue and East 110th Street that most New Yorkers point to as the source — gives two different answers from its own counter. A longtime cook says he built it in the 1990s out of necessity; the deli’s manager traces the technique further back, to Yemen. Neither has budged, and the deli, known to regulars as Hajji’s, is still the address most consistently named as where the sandwich started.
Who actually made the first one?
Frankie Frank, a Mexican-born cook who has worked the grill at the East Harlem bodega for years, told CBS New York that he came up with the sandwich in the 1990s on a night the deli ran out of buns. Rather than serve a plain cheeseburger patty on nothing, he chopped the beef and cheese together on the flat-top and folded the mix into a hero roll instead — a workaround that stuck with customers and then stayed on the menu.
Salah Alhubaishi, the deli’s manager, tells a different story rooted further back, connecting the chopped, spiced ground meat to Arab and Yemeni cooking traditions rather than to a single improvised shift. In his telling, the shop simply adapted a dish he already knew: “We just put it here, and we served it to the people, and the people started loving it,” he told CBS New York. He doesn’t hedge on where the credit belongs, either: “We are the original. We are the best. We are número uno.”
Both men work the same counter today, and both accounts come from CBS New York’s own reporting rather than from a single operator statement, which is part of why Manhattan Resto is presenting them as competing, on-the-record claims rather than settling the question. What both agree on is where and roughly when: East Harlem, decades ago, at a counter still open today.
What’s actually in it, and why the method is the point
The build is simple and specific: ground beef, onions and cheese — American, melted — chopped together on the flat-top until they merge into one mass, then packed into a hero or roll with lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise and ketchup. It’s the chopping itself, meat and cheese worked into each other on the griddle rather than layered afterward, that separates it from a plain cheeseburger or a chopped-meat hero elsewhere in the city — the one detail Frank and Alhubaishi don’t argue about even when they disagree on who started it.
Pricing isn’t fixed in any menu Manhattan Resto has seen posted directly by the deli; an East Harlem food blog that visited in June 2024 logged the sandwich, sometimes called “the everything” on the block, at $8.99, with the counter running 24 hours a day and orders available for pickup or delivery. Those figures move at bodegas without much notice and shouldn’t be treated as current pricing without checking on a given visit.
How far the recipe has traveled
By CBS New York’s account, versions of the sandwich have since spread through Harlem, into the Bronx, and beyond — and Hajji’s doesn’t treat that spread as competition so much as proof of the idea working. Alhubaishi frames the demand in plainly promotional terms, telling the network that customers travel specifically for it: “They come from around the world because they want to taste the New York sandwich.” That’s his claim about his own customers, not an independently counted figure, but it lines up with a sandwich that keeps showing up outside its original neighborhood: the same food blog that priced the sandwich also noted its foothold in New York rap culture, citing Harlem’s own Cam’ron among the artists who’ve referenced it.
Why the disagreement doesn’t really settle anything
Neither Frank’s account nor Alhubaishi’s can be verified against a written record from the 1990s — there isn’t one on file, and neither man has produced one. What’s documented is narrower and, for a sandwich built on a bodega’s late-night improvisation, maybe more honest: two people who work the same counter, telling two different stories about the same dish, both willing to put their names on it. Alhubaishi summed up why he doesn’t treat the dispute as a problem for the shop: “This chopped cheese — New York. It’s a culture of New York.” Whichever version of the origin holds up, the deli at First Avenue and East 110th Street is still the one most New Yorkers name first when the question comes up.
Where to check it out for yourself
Blue Sky Deli sits at 2135 First Avenue at East 110th Street in East Harlem, and it doesn’t keep bodega hours in the limited sense — the counter runs 24 hours, per the East Harlem food blog that visited and priced the sandwich in June 2024, with pickup and delivery both listed as options. That’s a detail worth logging with a date, the way any bodega’s hours or prices are worth logging with a date: it can change by the time a reader walks up to the counter, and neither this article nor the deli itself has posted a menu Manhattan Resto can point to as the current, fixed word on price.
What hasn’t changed, at least by every account gathered for this piece, is the address and the argument. Two men, one counter, one sandwich, two stories — and a line of customers, per Alhubaishi, that keeps showing up anyway.
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