REUBEN

Corned beef, sauerkraut, Swiss cheese, and Russian or 1000 Islands dressing sandwiched in rye bread and grilled: That is a Reuben sandwich, which any New York foodie will tell you was created at Reuben’s Delicatessen. The late Arnold Reuben (who is believed to have invented the double-decker sandwich and was the first New York restaurateur to name sandwiches for celebrities) said he first made it in 1914 as a late-night, clean-the-kitchen dish for a hungry actress who wanted an especially hearty sandwich.

Nebraskans have a completely different story of origin, which traces the sandwich to the Blackstone Hotel in the late 1920s, where Omaha butcher Reuben Kulakofsky came up with the idea and shared it with his poker buddy, Charles Schimmel, the hotel’s owner. Schimmel started serving it for lunch in his dining room, known as the Plush Horse, and in the mid-1950s, Fern Snider, former Blackstone waitress, won the National Sandwich Idea Contest with the recipe.

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No matter whether it was invented in New York or Nebraska, the Reuben now is nearly everywhere in the USA.

Variations of the Reuben include the Rachel, which substitutes pastrami for corned beef (and, sometimes, coleslaw for sauerkraut), and the Southern Reuben, in which barbecue sauce is substituted for Russian dressing.