The Brown Hotel Has Kentucky's Best Hot Brown, According To Our Readers

Sit down to eat a meal in any Kentucky restaurant—whether upscale or country casual—and there’s a good chance there will be a hot brown on the menu. The open-faced turkey sandwich, usually served warm on a thick slice of toast with bacon, tomatoes, and Mornay sauce, is a headliner on the Bluegrass State’s long list of culinary contributions, alongside barbecue, bourbon, and burgoo. You might encounter it in the form of a hot chicken sandwich (at Frankfort’s Bourbon on Main) or even as a vegetarian version that omits the turkey and bacon and adds asparagus, mushrooms, and zucchini (at Ramsey’s Diner in Lexington). 

The Original Hot Brown

For the true original, you’ll have to go to J. Graham’s Café at The Brown Hotel in Louisville, where the dish was born. Head chef Arkan Bajalani is a caretaker of the historic recipe, a responsibility he’s serious about and our readers appreciate—they voted The Brown Hotel the spot for a hot brown in Kentucky in our 2024 South's Best awards. Bajalani knows that, in this state full of hot browns, they’re not all created equal. Some are too heavy on the sauce. Others cut corners by using deli-sliced turkey. Many fail to keep the toast crunchy. All of these are cardinal errors, says Bajalani.

“You should be able to hear the crispiness of the bread when you cut into a hot brown. It should never be soggy,” he says. And he should know. The hotel serves around 80,000 each year, including about 500 per day during Kentucky Derby week.

The History of the Hot Brown

The dish originated in the 1920s, when flocks of patrons gathered to refuel at the hotel restaurant following The Brown’s popular dinner dances, which drew 1,200 guests nightly. Tired of serving the crowd traditional standbys like ham and eggs, chef Fred Schmidt developed the now famous sandwich.

The Hot Brown Today

The recipe hasn’t changed too much since then. The kitchen staff slow-cooks turkey breasts for five and a half hours before hand carving them. Crusts are removed from the thick slices of Texas toast sourced from Klosterman Baking Company. Bajalani taste tests the Mornay sauce (a béchamel with pecorino Romano cheese and a pinch of nutmeg) every morning. “We have to make sure it’s 100% right every time,” he says. The sandwich should be served still bubbling and browned from the broiler, garnished with parsley and shaved Parmesan cheese—and with no sliced tomatoes in sight. The hotel uses halved roasted Roma tomatoes to prevent the juice from ruining the flavor and color of the creamy white sauce.

The Brown makes sure its famed dish is available no matter the time of day at J. Graham’s Café, the airy and bright street-level spot for breakfast and lunch, as well as for dinner at the second-floor Lobby Bar & Grill, where you can marvel at the room’s hand-painted coffered ceiling and ornate marble work. Or it can be delivered through room service.

As the hot brown approaches its centennial, its enduring popularity can be chalked up to the time-tested recipe and the staff’s refusal to go on autopilot, even when they create hundreds of them each day. “You can see every ingredient," says Bajalani. “The dish has to look good because your eye eats first.”