Inside the Blackstone Hotel, a group that referred to themselves as “The Committee” had grown hungry during the course of their late night poker game. The group took turns cooking for one another and this time, it was up to the owner’s son, Bernard Schimmel, who had trained as a chef in Switzerland. Charles Schimmel, owner of the Blackstone as well as other hotels asked Bernard to make something special with sauerkraut.
The chef obliged by draining kraut from the grocery of Reuben Kulakofsky, another member of the group, mixing it with Russian/Thousand Island dressing before layering the sandwich with homemade corned beef and Emmental cheese on pumpernickel bread and grilling it. An alternate version of this story is that Bernard simply delivered a deli platter and Reuben himself created the sandwich. Either way, the Reuben sandwich was born that night in the Blackstone Hotel in 1925!
While some people may say that the sandwich was invented in NYC by Arnold Reuben as far back as 1914, there’s no proof. Also, his version of the sandwich differs quite a bit from the one we’ve grown to love over the last 98 years. The earliest proof of the sandwich appearing on the east coast is from a recipe in a cookbook from 1941. Meanwhile, the Douglas County Historical Society found a printed menu from the Blackstone offering the sandwich for $0.40 in 1934.
Reuben loved his namesake sandwich as did the Blackstone’s owner, Charles Schimmel, who put it on the menu at not only this hotel but the Cornhusker Hotel in Lincoln which he also owned. The sandwich won national fame after waitress, Fern Snider, entered it into the National Sandwich Idea Contest in 1956 where it won first place.
The beloved sandwich was said to be a favorite of both Susan Buffett and author Meredith Auld (the wives of Warren Buffett and Tom Brokaw) when they dined together at the Blackstone. Not only that but Robert Redford is said to have consumed his fair share of Reubens at the Blackstone which is where he got the question for his 1994 movie Quiz Show although the answer incorrectly attributed it to Reuben K (apparently Kulakofsky was too difficult to pronounce).
As the birthplace of the Reuben, Omaha has many options for where you can get one of these sandwiches. Crescent Moon Ale House, Barrett’s Barleycorn Pub and Grill and the Orleans Room at the Kimpton Cottonwood Hotel (formerly the Blackstone) are frequently mentioned as being the best.
Crescent Moon hosts an annual ReubenFest each year with Reubenized versions of food including egg rolls, soup, burritos, poutine, mac and cheese, pizza, tacos, tamales and more. The sandwich even has its own day on March 14th which is National Reuben Sandwich Day.
Fun fact: Bernard Schimmel has also been credited as the inventor of butter brickle ice cream here in Omaha.
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