At the height of the Roaring ’20s, hundreds of guests would assemble each weekend at The Brown Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, to dance into the wee hours. Whenever the band took a break, patrons would head to the hotel’s restaurant, J. Graham’s Cafe, for a bite. In 1926, chef Fred Schmidt, tired of serving the same old ham and eggs, threw together a brand-new concoction: an open-faced sandwich of turkey, bacon, tomatoes, and a cheesy mornay sauce atop Texas toast, baked until golden and bubbly.
As legend has it, the hot brown was an instant sensation, spreading first to other restaurants in Louisville and then throughout the state. A century later, Schmidt’s invention is still a shining star in the constellation of Kentucky cuisine, taking its place among other celebrated dishes like burgoo, Derby pie, and bourbon balls.
It’s widely acknowledged that The Brown Hotel’s original version still stands head and shoulders above other iterations, many of which take shortcuts, such as substituting deli meat for the slow-roasted, thick-sliced turkey. According to hotel manager Marc Salmon, the Brown still serves more than 40,000 of its namesake sandwiches each year, with upwards of 250 served per day the week before the Kentucky Derby.
“We have guests who’ve been coming for 40 years,” Salmon says. “For first-time visitors, having a hot brown is as much of an experience as visiting Churchill Downs or a bourbon distillery.”
There’s hardly an hour of the day guests can’t enjoy a hot brown in its rightful home—it’s served for breakfast and lunch at J. Graham’s, and for dinner and a late-night snack at the Lobby Bar & Grill, a soaring two-story space with chandeliers, marble floors, and a hand-painted plaster relief ceiling that has a history all its own. Singer Al Jolson was once involved in a fist fight there, and a bell captain caught a fish in the lobby during The Great Flood of 1937.
According to Salmon, new chefs are free to experiment with other dishes, but they have strict orders to not make even the slightest changes to the beloved sandwich. “Repeat guests expect absolute consistency when it comes to the hot brown,” Salmon says. That means removing the crust from the toast, then cutting one slice into two triangles and leaving the second one square so it fits in its oval baking dish. The crispy smoked applewood bacon is always placed on top in a criss-cross fashion, and the sliced Roma tomatoes are kept on the side. The mornay sauce gets its depth from hand-grated Pecorino Romano. And just like the mint julep needing to be served in its iconic silver cup, the hot brown’s two-handled oval dish is nonnegotiable.
Paul Crepey and Allen Heintzman, the hotel’s two chefs de cuisine, say home cooks can get away with substituting the bread, bacon, or cheese in the mornay sauce, but certain precautions must be taken: First, it is essential to keep the turkey moist. Second, half-and-half should never be used in place of the heavy cream, and avoid using too much milk or the sauce will be runny.
While the exact preparation of the original remains sacrosanct, that hasn’t stopped other Louisville establishments from putting their own spins on it. The Village Anchor uses chicken instead of turkey, Biscuit Belly swaps in homemade biscuits for the base, Noosh Nosh adds queso and chorizo for a Southwestern twist, and the Sidebar at Whiskey Row serves a hot brown burger.
As part of its centennial celebration of the iconic dish, The Brown Hotel is embracing this spirit of innovation by introducing a number of hot brown variations, including a dip, quesadilla, wontons, and poutine-like fries loaded with turkey, bacon, and mornay sauce. Heintzman also devised a hot brown chowder, with a cream and broth base made to resemble the sandwich’s sauce, flecked with potatoes, corn, turkey, bacon, and tomatoes. As Heintzman puts it, every new iteration must “remain true to the spirit of the hot brown.”
Only time will tell if any of these riffs enter Kentucky’s culinary pantheon, but the original has long proven its staying power—and perhaps will for another century.
Recipes
The Original Hot Brown
Turkey Chowder With Bacon and Tomatoes
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