The Hot Brown: Louisville's Legendary Open-Faced Sandwich

By Albert W. A. Schmid

The author of The Kentucky Bourbon Cookbook serves up Louisville lore and recipes that celebrate the city’s delicious culinary staple.

Originally created at its namesake the Brown Hotel, the Hot Brown began as turkey on bread covered in Mornay sauce and topped with tomato wedges and two slices of bacon, and has developed into an entire industry of fries, pizza, salads, and more. Chef Albert W. A. Schmid offers a wealth of recipes for the notorious sandwich and reveals the legends and stories that surround the dish. For example, it may have had humble beginnings as a tasty way to use up kitchen scraps, or it could have been invented to ward off hangovers—scandalous since the first Hot Browns were served during the Prohibition. Schmid treats readers to an exceptional collection of recipes for the legendary sandwich and hotel cuisine scrumptious enough to whet any appetite, including the Cold Brown (served during the summer), Chicken Chow Mein (the Brown Hotel Way), and Louisville-inspired cocktails such as the Muhammad Ali Smash.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Apr 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9781684350070

Book preview

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The Hot Brown Sandwich

THE HOT BROWN SANDWICH IS an inspired culinary creation that helped to put Kentucky cuisine on the map as one of the many great cuisines in the United States. The Hot Brown sandwich, known to locals as a Hot Brown was created as a late fall to winter sandwich. I never cease to be amazed that people will drive hundreds of miles (to the Brown Hotel) for a Hot Brown, said Brad Walker, the general manager and vice president of the Brown Hotel for the past fifteen years and graduate from Cornell’s hotel and restaurant management program. Later in the interview, Walker referred to the culinary creation as our lovely little sandwich. The Hot Brown attracts people from outside the hotel. Walker said it is not uncommon for six, eight, ten people to show up at J. Graham’s Café and all of them order a Hot Brown. They come from all over the United States and even overseas says Walker, who knows this fact because people post their experience on social media. Hotels (in the Louisville area) will direct people to the Brown for a Hot Brown, said Walker, who added that other hotels directing people away from their hotel to benefit another hotel is a unique situation that does not always happen. "The Welcome Center also sends a lot our