National Sloppy Joe Day, celebrated every year on March 18, is a holiday that is dedicated to the greatest sandwich of all time, the sloppy Joe. The sandwich has been around for approximately 95 years now, playing a key role in fast-food restaurants and kitchen tables.
The day aims to explore the wholesomeness of an extraordinary sandwich that has transformed the way people look at sandwiches. The sloppy Joe has garnered global appeal with its base recipe featuring onions, ground beef, and tomato sauce, and depending on what part of the world you are in, delicious varieties are made available by infusing other local ingredients.
There are different claims to the origin of the sloppy joe.
- 1920s – The sandwich, Ropa Vieja, is served.
- 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 1930’s, Citizen Kane and even It’s a Wonderful Life. Even though it was not widely popular until the 1960s.
- 1930s – In Havana, Cuba in the 1930s there was a genuine bartender who gained popularity with vacationers who went by the name of Sloppy Joe. He earned his name for his less-than-enthusiastic way of cleaning the bar. He was, however, an attentive bartender, and the bar was a hot spot for the jet set.
- 1933 – Famous and slightly infamous, Sloppy Joe’s Bar in Key West started on December 5, 1933, the day prohibition was repealed
- 1933 – However, no mention is found in papers from the era of a hot sandwich on the menu matching the description of a Sloppy Joe, and the man of the same name retired to Spain in 1933.
- 1934 – Another claim on the sandwich is that the Ye Olde Tavern Inn by Abraham and Bertha Kaled in Sioux City, Iowa that had a loose meat sandwich on their menu in 1934.
- 1969 – Whoever brought the Sloppy Joe to the world, it was made more convenient when in 1969 Hunt’s put it in a can and called it Manwich.
- 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.
- 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
- 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.
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