National Sloppy Joe Day, celebrated every year on March 18, is a holiday dedicated to the greatest sandwich of all time, the sloppy Joe.
There are different claims to the origin of the sloppy joe.
- 1920 – In Havana, Cuba. A bartender, José Abel Otero, created and successfully sold a simple sandwich based on a Cuban dish of shredded beef, tomato sauce, and spices called Ropa Vieja.
- 1930 – Some people attribute sloppy joes to a chef named Joe in Sioux City, Iowa, who added tomato sauce to his “loose meat sandwiches”
- 1930s – “Sloppy Joe’s” were mentioned in several movies of the 1930s, Citizen Kane and even It’s a Wonderful Life. Even though it was not widely popular until the 1960s.
- 1933 – Famous and slightly infamous, Sloppy Joe’s Bar in Key West started on December 5, 1933, the day prohibition was repealed
- 1934 – Another claim on the sandwich is that the Ye Olde Tavern Inn by Abraham and Bertha Kaled in Sioux City, Iowa had a loose meat sandwich on their menu in 1934.
- 1939s – the Town Hall Deli in Maplewood, NJ has a direct connection to Sloppy Joe of Havana fame. Town Mayor Sweeney traveled to Havana and met bartender Sloppy Joe who served a delicious sandwich. The mayor so enjoyed the sandwich, that he asked one of Town Hall Deli’s owners to replicate it. According to the Town Deli website, ‘It is the birthplace of the Sloppy Joe sandwich.
- 1941 – ‘Sloppy Joe’ makes an appearance in the movie “Citizen Kane.”
- 1960s – Sloppy Joes become a household name.
- 1969 – The ‘Manwich’ is released.
- The term sloppy joe had an earlier definition of any cheap restaurant or lunch counter serving cheap food quickly or of a type of casual clothing
- A half-cup serving of Sloppy Joes on a white bread hamburger bun contains approximately 256 calories.
- Some other names for sloppy joes include barbecues, dynamites, goulash, sloppy janes, slush burgers, steamers, wimpies, and yum yums.
- Though they are the same thing, the sloppy Jane is considered the healthier version of sloppy Joe.
- Early and mid-20th century American cookbooks offer plenty of sloppy joe-type recipes, though they go by different names: Toasted Deviled Hamburgers, Chopped Meat Sandwiches, Spanish Hamburgers, Hamburg a la Creole, Beef Mironton, and Minced Beef Spanish Style.
- While sloppy joes offer a good source of protein, they also are fairly high in fat and are lacking in vegetables.
Sources:
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