Reuben Sandwich – A grilled sandwich made with corned beef, Swiss cheese, sauerkraut, and Russian dressing on rye bread.

Patricia B. Taylor, daughter of Arnold Reuben, the founder of Reuben’s Restaurant and Delicatessen, remembers that her father made the first Reuben Sandwich in 1914. It is said that late one evening an actress came into the restaurant and said, Reuben took a loaf of rye bread created this Reuben sandwich. Arnold Reuben, Jr., the son of the restaurant’s founder, believes that the sandwich was first made in 1927 or 1928 by one of the chefs who though that he ate too many hamburgers, made him a “really good sandwich.”

Another version is Reuben Kolakofsky, a wholesale grocer in Omaha, Nebraska, created the Reuben Sandwich sometime between 1920 and 1935. Kolakofsky belonged to a weekly poker group whose members apparently enjoyed fixing their own sandwiches every bit as much as they enjoyed playing poker. One of the players, named Schimmel, operated the Blackstone Hotel in Omaha. It is said that he or his son put the Reuben Sandwich on the hotel menu. In 1956, Fern Snider, a waitress at the Blackstone Hotel entered the sandwich in the National Sandwich Idea Contest held that year. The Reuben Sandwich won first place and obtained almost immediate national fame.

The final version is that William Hamerly, a New York accountant, invented the Reuben Sandwich in the 1950s. He named it for Arnold Reuben, founder of Reuben’s Restaurant and Delicatessen. Arnold Reuben had received several awards for his charitable work in New York, and because Hamerly admired these charitable works, he named the sandwich after him.