All Is Nostalgia on New Year's Day
Sandwiching in a Toast for Traditions
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DISH: Saudade for the Sloppy Joe
Growing up in the Seventies and Eighties, the irony that was visited on us every January 1 was wasted. With most of the year dedicated to meals bracketed with fruits and vegetables, we were unaware that much of the world looked to January as a fresh start to dieting. That’s not how we began every year.
In our family, the first often brought a trek to our paternal aunt’s house for a day of football, feasting, and family dynamics. There, platters of New Jersey Sloppy Joe sandwiches centered the table. To be fair, the food and football were very appealing to a certain chunk of the family even if they did not make for a great day for all of us. Nevertheless, the fattening, artery-hardening Sloppy Joe deli sandwich resonates for us all these years later. It’s part of our culinary heritage vernacular, as it is for so many other New Jerseyans. Like Taylor ham – what some of you might know as pork roll – which our brother adored and demanded that our mother purchase every time she went to the Shop-Rite, this was food you got and ate at home. Diets be damned.
In other regions, the Sloppy Joe has a different definition. The thick, seasoned ground meat stew is literally slopped over soft burger buns. Our mom sometimes served that, too, as a quick and filling dinner.
That is not the Jersey version, which highlights deli meats and local bread. Sliced turkey and corned beef (sometimes pastrami or God forbid, tongue) are layered between three thin slices of (usually seedless) rye, slicked with Russian dressing, and piled with coleslaw. Non-kosher versions include ham and Swiss. Defectors ask for mustard. Platters stored overlong in the fridge suffer dramatically from too much exposure to moisture. Sloppy Joes are often somewhat soggy treats which you can now order for delivery anywhere in the country from Goldbelly (and last year, Jen’s husband did just that as a holiday surprise for her).
The Town Hall Delicatessen in South Orange, not far from where we grew up in Livingston, takes credit for originating the sandwich in the 1930s. Legend has it that it’s based on a customer’s exposure to Cuba. And not just any customer, but the mayor of nearby Maplewood, who spent his time in a Havana bar there called Sloppy Joe’s, a dive known to host Ernest Hemingway and other colorful characters in its rather untidy environs (hence the name). Apparently, Mayor Sweeney wanted the deli back home to recreate the ham, tongue, Swiss cheese, and coleslaw sandwiches for his poker games.
Living in Miami with nearly 30 years of experience savoring Cuban cuisine, Jen isn’t sure this quite passes the smell test. The rye bread and coleslaw, in particular, strike odd notes. As it turns out, the Old Havana Sloppy Joes Bar does have a story about inventing Sloppy Joes. But it doesn’t involve deli meats and Russian dressing. In fact, the bar says the sandwich was made with ropa vieja, a kind of stew, the name of which translates to “old clothes.”
Many people think the moniker refers to the appearance of this braised, shredded meat dish. This is probably more likely to be the case than the tall tale that says it’s named for the old man who was so poor that he boiled his clothes to eat and then found them magically turned to beef. Ahem. Ropa vieja, while often called the national dish of Cuba, can actually be traced to Spain and its Sephardic Jews, who slow-cooked this dish for the Sabbath as far back as 500 years ago.
Food history is so interesting. But we digress. It’s far more possible that the Havana Sloppy Joe sandwich gave rise to the chunky beef variants we see all over rather than the very specific deli sandwich that stems from northern New Jersey. Still, it’s a good story. And by the 1950s, other local delis had added the deli version of the Sloppy Joe to their menus, and the sandwich had also spread to New York City. Supermarkets, too, had their versions for sale. Clearly, they were a hit for a number of people and remained so. For us, though, the combination of sodden sandwiches and disinterest in televised sports was a new year non-starter.
Now, of course, we feel differently.
It took a few decades of changing tastes and the shedding of egg allergies – although while Betsy’s childhood egg allergy has disappeared, Jen’s has resurfaced during the pandemic – to really appreciate the deliciousness of a Sloppy Joe. And now that this option isn’t available, we want it more than ever. This year, we crave the company of each other over a platter of Sloppy Joes the way used to commune over them in the old days.
Hopefully, in 2021, we will recover a fraction of what we are missing, even as we continue to sequester in our own homes and separate states for the moment. In the meantime, naturally, we are cooking. Betsy is making “sofa king” good sandwiches constructed, occasionally, with her youngest. (Even though he never experienced the first-of-the-year tradition quite the way we did, he’s got his own fave version of the Sloppy Joe, whose dressing he has worked hard to perfect.) For lunch today, it was a French onion soup “grilled cheese” sandwich, stuffed with caramelized onions and shallots and Gruyère.
Jen had decadence, too, left over from last night: Bread from Sullivan St Bakery spread with caviar butter (35% Osetra mixed into French butter) from Marky’s Gourmet and sprinkled with scallions snipped from the garden.
Is that cooking? Is that a sandwich? Does it matter?
So as 2021 gets underway, we raise both a glass and a sandwich to you – whatever flavors and styles you like. We’re determined to have something to celebrate.
Do you have a favorite sandwich? Please tell us in the comments. We’d love to know.
BK / JK
