Kentucky's Most Famous Sandwich Is a Glorious Mess of Meat and Cheese

In 1926, the Brown Hotel was the apex of glamour and late-night revelry in Louisville. Imagine dinner dances in the style of Gatsby (though not completely—if one truly wanted the Gatsby experience, the Seelbach Hotel, from which Fitzgerald drew his inspiration, is right down the block). The parties drew over a thousand guests each night. After dancing until almost dawn, guests flocked to the restaurant for a late-night snack, only to be disappointed when greeted by the same plate of ham and eggs. The story goes that they challenged the chef at the time, Fred Schmidt, to bring something new to the table—and from that request, a Kentucky classic was born.

The Hot Brown—a take on Welsh rarebit—is an open-faced turkey sandwich on Texas toast that is covered in a creamy, delicate Mornay sauce. This is all topped with a slice or two of a Roma tomato, a dash of nutmeg, and left to bubble in the oven until browned, all before the dish is finished off with a cross of two strips of thick-cut bacon.

Shortly after its debut, the Hot Brown became the favorite for 95 percent of the hotel guests, a tradition that has carried on to today. According to Rachel Goldenberg of Estes PR, which has represented the Brown for nearly a decade, "The Brown Hotel sells more than 18,000 Hot Browns each year, including nearly 1,000 [on] Kentucky Derby weekend alone."

Here, asking people about their first Hot Brown is like asking people about their first kiss; it comes with lingering memories of their immediate reactions, a distinct sense of place and, eventually, the continued story of whether they felt it was worth going back for more.

I took to Facebook recently to poll friends regarding their inaugural experience with the classic dish, and the answers showed impressive range. One read,"My Dad came into town to visit with one request: to eat a Hot Brown at The Brown. We did and it was the best bacon I've ever tasted." Another: "My first was at Patti's Place at Land Between the Lakes when I was in grade school. I just remember feeling really ill afterwards."

And my favorite: "Mine was at Governor's Scholar Program when one of my instructors was shocked so many of us had never had one or heard of it. She made enough for 20 of us on a hot plate in a dorm room."

Personally, I have an embarrassing amount of love for Hot Browns, though my very first wasn't from The Brown Hotel—it was The Kelsey "KY" Brown from Wild Eggs, a local breakfast chain.

This version is almost identical to the original sandwich from the Brown; the only real difference is the fried egg perched on the top. Not being originally from Kentucky, I had no clue about the historical legacy of the dish. I just knew that it was decadent and I wanted to share. Excitedly I told a fellow food writer, a lifelong Louisvillian, about my find.

"Oh, dear," she sniffed. "That's hardly an authentic Hot Brown."

Authenticity is a popular topic of debate when it comes to the Hot Brown in Louisville. Perhaps because of the obvious identification of origin in the name, some assert that it can't be authentic if it's not served in one of the Brown Hotel's dining rooms.

And, to be fair, it's hard to compete in this town—especially when the Courier-Journal, Louisville's city paper, has historically put forth reviews like this about the hotel: "Perfection is Possible. It marks the first time I have ever given a Louisville eatery four stars in all three review categories. Such a rating implies as close to perfection as a restaurant can come, and that's exactly the dining experience friends and I enjoyed."

But like most things worth sharing, the popularity of the Hot Brown ended up spreading—though, unlike another popular Kentucky dish, Derby Pie, its creators didn't choose to trademark the name. The earliest evidence of spread outside the Louisville region was at the Mayfair Hotel in St. Louis, now the Magnolia Hotel, in the early 1930s. The hotel still serves a version of the dish, called "the prosperity sandwich," as a special in their lounge, Robie's.

Other Louisville institutions, from the dining room at the Galt House to greasy spoons like the Twig & Leaf Diner, eventually created their own version. Yet after economic hardship hit downtown Louisville, the Brown Hotel was forced to close its doors in 1971. Until 1992, the year that chef Joe Castro arrived at the hotel, the Hot Brown was unavailable at its point of origin; but when it came back, the Hot Brown was as good as ever, even leading to a victory for Castro and his brother on Throwdown! with Bobby Flay. They, along with most of the restaurants that had picked up the recipe, obviously stuck with the original Hot Brown formula: toast, cheese sauce, turkey meat, tomato, and bacon.

In recent years, however, the city has seen an increasing number of imaginative Hot Brown interpretations. One of the most innovative deviations comes Castro's brother, John, who is the chef at Winston's, a New American restaurant. His speciality? The "Not Brown."

"My brother kept after me to put a Hot Brown on the menu, so as a way to sort of hit him with a velvet hammer, I created the 'Not Brown.'" Castro said. "It's fried green tomatoes in the place of the bread, shrimp, crab, spinach—and then basically the same as the original with the Mornay and bacon."

The classic has also found its place as local bar grub (which makes sense, considering its place as both a hangover cure and the ultimate drunk food). Lil Cheezers is a grilled cheese food truck that has partially taken over the kitchen at The Monkey Wrench bar, "Louisville's finest, eclectic hillbilly headquarters."

Founder Matt Davis, who quit nursing school and his job as a paramedic to start the truck, originally developed the "Kentucky 'Tot' Brown" with a friend as a backup menu item, but quickly realized that it needed to be a permanent addition.

"It came about very organically. We weren't trying to reinvent the Hot Brown at all. It was a fun thing to do since we were in the home of the Hot Brown," Davis said. "Unlike the actual Hot Brown recipe, we don't make a Mornay sauce and all that jazz. It's a fun thing to get ahold of at a bar or music festival, so we kept the ingredients simple: tater tots, cheddar cheese sauce, shredded turkey, applewood bacon chunks, and diced tomatoes."

Whether or not these interpretations will please those in search of a purely authentic Hot Brown is uncertain, but perhaps their popularity is an indicator that with a classic at their core, a different kind of perfection is possible outside the confines of the Brown Hotel.