The Kentucky Hot Brown is an almost ridiculously hearty dish: an open-faced sandwich of turkey and bacon on a thick piece of toast, blanketed in creamy Mornay sauce (a bechamel enriched with plenty of Pecorino Romano cheese) and crowned with a tomato slice for color, plus more cheese delicately browned under the broiler.
“It’s not something you can rush through,” says Marc Salmon, general manager of the Brown Hotel, where chef Fred Schmidt created the dish in 1926. One hundred years later, visitors still flock to the hotel to sample a big honking hunk of history in its original surrounds.
According to Salmon, who also serves as the hotel’s de facto Hot Brown historian, the dish originated to feed large groups of partygoers as a red-eye repast. “We had a band that would play on our rooftop garden late at night,” Salmon says, “and guests would descend to the restaurant afterwards for something to eat.” While ham and eggs might have been a typical early-morning offering at the time, Schmidt “wanted to serve something fancier,” Salmon says, but something that was still rib-sticking enough to fortify weary revelers—and soak up illicit Prohibition-era booze as well.
At a time when French cuisine was considered the height of fashion, the Hot Brown might have seemed like a deconstructed version of France’s Croque-Monsieur (a hot sandwich made with ham and Gruyère cheese, elevated with bechamel), posits author Albert W.A. Schmid in his 2018 monograph, The Hot Brown.
While the original recipe has its own comforting appeal, that hasn’t stopped local chefs from tinkering with the classic. Think Hot Brown–filled empanadas, “tailpipes” (spring rolls) with Mornay dipping sauce, and smothered Hot Brown tots. “Everyone seems to put their own spin on it,” observes Lauren Coulter, owner of the Biscuit Belly chain, which includes three locations in Louisville, where the Hot Brown Biscuit—a biscuit split open and topped with shredded turkey, bacon, roasted tomato, and smoked gouda Mornay—is a top seller, particularly around the Kentucky Derby each May.
The dish has endured in part because its namesake hotel still stands, Coulter suggests, giving visitors a physical site for a nostalgic foodie pilgrimage. It’s also become a piece of regional culinary heritage, almost as recognizable as KFC or Papa John’s, she adds. (It’s even been the subject of a “Top Chef” challenge.) “We are the bourbon capital of the world, but Louisville also has a unique stake in the ground around food and the culinary space,” Coulter says. “The Hot Brown is like the cheesesteak is to Philly.”
The launch of Louisville’s Hot Brown Week in 2022, now held annually in October, has sparked even more offerings around the city. Some dishes have rolled out as specials just for the week, but the pinkies-up French Hot Brown (braised pork belly and duck confit on a grilled baguette) remains on the menu year-round at Brasserie Provence. Hot Brown love expands across the state, too. Tucked between Louisville and Lexington, Frankfort hosts an annual springtime Kentucky Hot Brown Trail Week with a passport listing all the spots in town that feature the dish.
And while the heartiness is part of its longstanding appeal, some have attempted to give the Hot Brown a bit of a slim-down, especially for menus at weddings and other events, says Sherry Hurley-Magnuson, owner of Farm to Fork Catering in Louisville. “You have to have a version of the Hot Brown on the menu, there’s no getting around it,” she says. Her solution: a mini quiche made with a petite puff pastry cup filled with smoked turkey breast, Mornay, and a halved cherry tomato, topped with crumbled bacon. Having a “little vessel” for the tartlet also makes it less messy as a passed appetizer. “It’s like someone cut off a little bite of Hot Brown for you,” she says. For one VIP Derby kickoff event that demanded an “elevated” version, she swapped out turkey for a briny sea scallop, to delightful effect.
Another of Hurley-Magnuson’s go-to options for event menus: Hot Brown pasta (she shares the recipe here). “It works great on a buffet, and it’s very cost-effective,” the caterer says. Turkey (or sometimes smoked chicken) mixes with penne, tomatoes, and bacon, plus what she calls “a Southern alfredo situation” in place of traditional Mornay.
Even the Brown Hotel has gotten in on the riffs, from a “Cold Brown”(with lettuce, tomato, and sliced hard-boiled egg) to a celebratory “Haute Brown” (turkey roulade, tomato gelée, seared foie gras, truffle-infused Mornay). The hotel has also created a decadent and shareable Hot Brown dip (which I split with a friend on one visit and still could not finish) as well as poutine-inspired French fries covered in Mornay sauce and bacon, and even Hot Brown chowder, flatbreads, wontons, and quesadillas.
But the OG isn’t going anywhere. “The Hot Brown represents tradition here,” Salmon says. “What makes it so popular is that it’s authentic and people hold us to the standard of maintaining the dish the way it was served thirty, forty, fifty, or sixty years ago.”
