The first clue is the name of the sandwich: Jiu Jitsu Steak. The second is its complete lack of restraint.
Thinly sliced steak meets homemade chimichurri, sweet caramelized onions, and another spoonful of chimichurri for good measure, all packed into a warm roll that requires two hands and several napkins. This is Sandwichitos, a small North Bergen shop sitting near the Edgewater line at 9025 Old River Road.
Before sandwiches took over the address, Brazilian jiu jitsu students trained here. Owner Markin De La Cruz preserved a piece of that history when he named his signature creation, but the rest of the menu tells a much broader New Jersey story.
Dominican flavors mingle with Italian-American staples, cheesesteak logic, fried chicken, broccoli rabe, plantains, and plenty of melted cheese. It sounds chaotic on paper.
Coming out of the kitchen, however, it all makes delicious sense.
The Story Behind Sandwichitos
Sandwichitos officially opened in September 2023, but the idea had been simmering in Markin De La Cruz’s kitchen for years. De La Cruz was born in the Dominican Republic and moved to Brooklyn with his family when he was 3.
He grew up in Sheepshead Bay, where eating across cultures is less a special occasion than an ordinary Tuesday. Italian delis, Caribbean cooking, American comfort food, and neighborhood sandwich counters all became part of his culinary vocabulary.
By the time De La Cruz settled in Edgewater with his wife, Amanda, he had earned a reputation among friends for taking food very seriously. He spent roughly four years cooking and aging steaks at home, producing results his friends compared with meals from expensive steakhouses.
He also had a habit familiar to many opinionated food lovers: whenever a restaurant disappointed him, he could immediately explain how he would fix the problem. Eventually, those opinions became a business plan.
Sandwichitos was his first restaurant, opening in a renovated storefront at 9025 Old River Road near the Hudson and Bergen county border. Customers spilled through the doors during its opening celebration, when the original menu featured about a dozen gourmet sandwiches.
The location helps explain why the place can feel hidden despite sitting near one of North Jersey’s busiest corridors. Old River Road runs close to River Road and the Edgewater boundary, an area better known for waterfront apartment buildings, supermarkets, and commuter traffic than destination sandwich shops.
Sandwichitos does not resemble a grand culinary production from outside, which is part of the fun. You enter a modest storefront and encounter a menu where nearly every item sounds as if two different neighborhood restaurants decided to collaborate after midnight.
How a Jiu Jitsu Champion Entered the Restaurant Business
Before caramelized onions started hitting the griddle, students were hitting the mats. The storefront previously housed Team Curuma Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Academy, led by third-degree black belt Anderson “Curuma” Santos.
The academy later moved nearby, but De La Cruz did not erase every trace of the business that had occupied the space before him. Instead, he turned that history into lunch.
The Jiu Jitsu Steak was named for the former tenant, giving Sandwichitos a genuine martial-arts connection without inventing a dramatic career change for its owner. De La Cruz is a self-described passionate eater and first-time restaurateur, not a documented jiu jitsu world champion.
The real story is more local and arguably more interesting: a neighborhood training space changed hands, the mats gave way to a kitchen, and the new owner created a sandwich honoring the people who had gathered there before him.
That gesture fits North Bergen, where compact storefronts often live several different lives and the old identity of an address rarely disappears overnight.
Former customers remember what used to be there, while longtime residents give directions using businesses that closed years ago. Sandwichitos embraced that continuity rather than pretending the space had no past.
There is even some combat-sports logic in the menu’s construction. These are sturdy, unapologetic sandwiches with names such as Holy Cow, Dirty South, Red Machine, and Cheesy Bird.
They arrive loaded with meat, sauces, fried components, and cheese, yet the most successful combinations still depend on balance. Too much richness and the whole thing taps out early.
Herbs, pickles, jalapeños, bitter greens, and acidic sauces keep the heavier ingredients under control. The former academy did not become a restaurant run by a champion fighter.
It became something more unusual—a sandwich shop that kept the fighting spirit in its names, portions, and biggest flavors.
Dominican and Italian Flavors Meet in North Bergen
North Bergen is exactly the kind of town where fried Latin cheese and broccoli rabe can share menu space without anyone demanding an explanation. The township sits across the Hudson from Manhattan and beside Union City, Guttenberg, West New York, and Edgewater.
Its food scene reflects generations of immigration and the everyday overlap among Latin American, Italian-American, and broader New York–New Jersey eating traditions. De La Cruz built Sandwichitos from that overlap.
His Dominican background supplies roasted pork, plantains, Latin salami, fried cheese, and pickled onions. The Italian side of his family contributes chicken cutlets, mozzarella, tomato sauce, caponata, olive spread, and broccoli rabe.
American sandwich-shop instincts bring buffalo sauce, onion rings, cheesesteak-style ribeye, grilled cheese, and tater tots into the mix. The clearest expression may be the Spanish Pig in Italy.
Priced at $17.50, it layers Spanish-style roasted pork shoulder with sautéed broccoli rabe and mozzarella. The pork is rich and tender, the greens add pleasant bitterness, and the cheese ties the two traditions together without smothering either one.
It lands somewhere between a roast-pork sandwich and an Italian specialty-store hero. Then there is the $16.50 DR 3 Hits, which abandons bread altogether.
Two pieces of fried plantain hold fried Latin salami, fried Latin cheese, a fried egg, and pickled onions. Its name refers to the classic Dominican combination known as los tres golpes, or “the three hits.” Here, the familiar breakfast plate has been compressed into a handheld meal with crisp edges, salty fillings, rich egg, and enough sharp onion to wake everything up.
This is fusion without a white-tablecloth speech. The ingredients are not combined for novelty alone; they reflect the foods surrounding De La Cruz throughout his life.
Sandwichitos feels recognizably Dominican, Italian-American, and North Jersey at once because those identities were already sharing streets, homes, and dinner tables long before they met on this menu.
The Jiu Jitsu Steak Sandwich That Steals the Show
At $18.50, the Jiu Jitsu Steak is not trying to compete with a basic deli sub. It is closer to a full steak dinner pushed into a roll.
The kitchen starts with thinly sliced beef seasoned in homemade chimichurri, grills it until the edges pick up color, and adds caramelized onions. Extra chimichurri goes over the top because restraint would miss the point.
The sauce does most of the strategic work. Steak and slowly cooked onions can become heavy fast, especially inside bread.
Chimichurri cuts through both with herbs, garlic, acidity, and a little heat. That brightness keeps the sandwich from eating like a pile of beef grease, while the onions soften the sharper notes with sweetness.
This is also the item most closely tied to De La Cruz’s pre-restaurant obsession with steak. Long before Sandwichitos opened, he was experimenting with meat at home and serving it to friends who encouraged him to take the idea further.
His signature sandwich turns that steakhouse ambition into something more casual and far better suited to North Bergen: no reservation, no polished silverware, and no debate over which fork to use. Customers can swap the roll for fried plantain, an option that changes the sandwich’s personality considerably.
Bread absorbs the juices and makes the experience feel like an overachieving steak hero. Plantain introduces sweetness, crispness, and a stronger Dominican accent.
Either version is messy, but that is hardly a flaw. This is a sandwich whose structural integrity becomes increasingly theoretical as you eat it.
For larger gatherings, Sandwichitos also sells a 21-inch Jiu Jitsu Steak for $59.99. That nearly two-foot version turns the house specialty into a centerpiece, though dividing it evenly may require better negotiation skills than anything once taught in the old academy.
The standard sandwich remains the clearest introduction to what the kitchen does best: familiar ingredients, forceful seasoning, and just enough acidity to make one more bite sound reasonable.
More Knockout Creations Worth Ordering
The easiest way to navigate the rest of the menu is to choose your preferred form of excess. Anyone craving chicken, crunch, heat, and cheese in the same bite should look toward the $18.50 Dirty South.
It piles grilled chicken seasoned with an in-house dry rub alongside panko-battered onion rings, mozzarella, homemade buffalo sauce, and sliced pickles. Those pickles matter more than they may appear to; without their snap and acidity, the sandwich would become one long, rich note.
The Holy Cow, priced at $19.50, takes a different route. Shredded beef is grilled with onions and jalapeños, then topped with arugula, caramelized onions, and homemade chipotle sauce.
It is smoky, peppery, and substantial, with fresh arugula providing a welcome break from the beef and sauce. Italian-American sandwich loyalists have several options.
The $17.50 Chicken Milanese combines a breaded chicken cutlet with homemade olive spread, seasoned arugula, and mozzarella. The Red Machine uses the same style of cutlet but heads toward chicken Parmesan territory with roasted red peppers, homemade tomato sauce, and mozzarella.
Vegetarians get more than the usual pile of grilled peppers. The Eggplant features freshly fried eggplant topped with caponata made from olives, capers, and celery in tomato sauce for $16.50.
For cheesesteak cravings, the $19.50 Philly Special brings together thinly shaved ribeye, homemade cheese sauce, and caramelized onions. The Cheesy Bird applies similar logic to chopped grilled chicken, then adds grilled jalapeños.
Even the grilled cheese refuses to remain elementary, combining fried Latin cheese, American, Swiss, and mozzarella. Sides are refreshingly straightforward.
Regular and sweet potato tater tots cost $6.50, while fruit shakes in flavors including passion fruit, mango, guava, blackberry, papaya, and pineapple are also $6.50. Dessert choices include tres leches, strawberry shortcake, and chocolate-almond tiramisu at $8 each—a final cultural crossover that feels entirely at home here.
Why This Hidden Spot Is Winning Over New Jersey
Sandwichitos works because it knows what kind of restaurant it wants to be. It is not a traditional Dominican lunch counter, an Italian deli, a cheesesteak shop, or a modern chef-driven concept, though pieces of all four appear on the menu.
It is a highly personal sandwich shop built from the foods its owner grew up around, the recipes he encountered through marriage, and the big-flavor habits of North Jersey. That personality extends to the names.
Spanish Pig in Italy tells you exactly what cultural collision is coming. DR 3 Hits gives a Dominican staple a portable redesign.
Jiu Jitsu Steak preserves a link to the storefront’s former life. Nothing feels focus-grouped, and the menu is compact enough that the playful naming never becomes exhausting.
The practical details are simple. Sandwichitos is located at 9025 Old River Road in North Bergen, close to the Edgewater border.
Its posted hours are 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day except Tuesday, when the restaurant is closed. Sandwich prices generally run from $15.50 to $19.50, placing them above everyday deli territory but in line with their size, house-made sauces, and full-meal construction.
Pickup and delivery are available, and the restaurant offers 21-inch versions of many sandwiches for parties and family gatherings. Most importantly, the shop delivers something difficult to manufacture: a clear sense of where it comes from.
The Dominican ingredients are not decorative, the Italian influence amounts to more than a blanket of mozzarella, and even the martial-arts theme has a real address-level history behind it. The truth suits Sandwichitos better than the champion-turned-chef tale that has sometimes followed it online.
A Dominican immigrant raised in Brooklyn became an obsessive home cook, moved to New Jersey, and opened his first restaurant in a former jiu jitsu space. He kept part of the old tenant’s identity, added his family’s flavors, and created a North Bergen sandwich shop that could not have emerged quite the same way anywhere else.