It's fitting that following the closing of Danny's Downtown Deli, a yearlong quest by a small group of locals to identify Lincoln's best Reuben sandwich culminated at the Marriott Cornhusker Hotel.
After all, that's where the sandwich was invented.
You read that right.
Or so says Brendan Evans, the executive director of Leadership Lincoln who realizes such a statement might be deemed blasphemous and could cause more heartburn than the sandwich itself with our neighbors in Omaha.
It's Omaha that lays claim to the Reuben's origins.
"They're going to be angry about this, I know," said Evans, who doubles as the sandwich group's R&D guru and recording secretary.
And he chose a cold Wednesday in mid-December — after months of testing Reubens all over town, from Billy's Restaurant and Patty's Pub to the Green Gateau and many other eateries, including even wangling an invite to the boujee Country Club of Lincoln — to tell the world.
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"I’m saying it was invented in Lincoln," Evans said.
What? For more than 100 years, Omaha has prided itself on being the birthplace of the classic sandwich. It even fended off attempts by a New York City deli (called Reuben's) to steal the title and claim it as its own.
"Omaha seems to have a lot of identity tied up in this sandwich," said Mike Semrad, a local musician and the executive director of Jazz in June as well as a member of the sandwich group, which goes by a lot of names — The Reuben Posse, The Reubenators, Reubie Tuesday, among them.
But never mistakes them for rubes.
Omaha may be Nebraska's largest city, but everyone at the table was quick to point out that the state capital is located 40 miles southwest, along with the state's flagship university and a football program that takes up most of the state's oxygen and idle chit-chat.
Omaha needs that sandwich — and its history — far more than Lincoln, says Evans, but history doesn't lie. Besides, there's more to life than a Reuben. Maybe a patty melt or a BLT.
Prior to Evans tipping the sandwich world on its side, the Reuben's Omaha origins had been etched in stone — at least around here. It was considered an indisputable fact that the first Reuben was served sometime in the 1920s at the Blackstone Hotel in Omaha.
The tale goes that a group of men gathered at the Blackstone to play poker when one of them, a fella named Reuben Kulakofsky, grew hungry in the midst of the game and called down to the kitchen for a snack.
The chef created a sandwich of corned beef, Swiss cheese, sauerkraut and Russian dressing, pressed hot on rye bread.
It was love at first bite.
"That's the story I've always heard," said Janis Davis, the director of food and beverages at The Cornhusker. "… I have read a lot about this. Of course, you want this iconic sandwich to be from Nebraska."
We can agree on that. No one west of the Mississippi River wants the highfalutin’ snobs of New York to win this argument. And heaven knows, they've tried.
A few years ago, Andrew Smith, an author of 24 books, disputed the Blackstone theory with a letter to the editor to the New York Times after Elizabeth Wiel, a great-granddaughter in the Schimmel family, which owned the Blackstone, wrote in 2016 about the poker game at the Omaha hotel and the sandwich it inspired. Smith wrote that "it is a nice story, but the answer to the question is, 'Wrong.'"
Smith said that the sandwich was first made in 1914 — a decade before — by Arnold Reuben at his sandwich shop in New York City.
"I have read two or three articles where people question it and Omaha always seems to be the winner of the argument," Davis said.Â
Wiel fought with Smith for years over the sandwich — and Omaha's ownership to it. She considered herself a crusader for the entire state.Â
Evans claims she simply chose the wrong city in Nebraska.
There are two factors, he says, that have never been considered in his pro-Lincoln theory.
First, the Schimmel family owned both the Blackstone Hotel and Lincoln's Cornhusker.
Second, The Cornhusker had a restaurant that was known far and wide for one thing: its corned beef, which was used to make a hash that kept people coming to Lincoln.
That fact alone changes the argument, says Davis, who was not aware of The Cornhusker's storied history regarding corned beef.
"This is the first time I have heard this, and that gives it an extra layer of context," she said.Â
There was nothing nefarious, Evans contends. He doesn't believe the recipe for the sandwich was sneaked out of Lancaster County in the dead of night. He contends the Schimmels tested the Reuben in Lincoln and after it was given favorable reviews, they brought the sandwich to Omaha and that's where it found the spotlight.
"I believe it was made first in Lincoln and brought to Omaha because it was such a good sandwich," Evans said. "The Cornhusker hotel already had a great recipe for corned beef hash."
That's called good business. The Schimmels weren't putting all their eggs — or in this case, slow-cooked meat — in one basket.
By moving the Reuben to Omaha, the Schimmels created two dining destinations — one for the corned beef hash and the other for the Reuben.Â
And, because you asked, The Cornhusker makes a pretty good — maybe Lincoln's best — Reuben, according to the group, which on that day consisted of Evans, Semrad and his wife Kerry, the general manager at KZUM; Pat Leach, director of Lincoln City Libraries; Michele Tilley, the former communications manager at the Lied Center for Performing Arts; Catharine Huddle, a former Journal Star editor; and Lincoln attorney Gail Steen.
Evans has a spreadsheet with the scores of every Reuben the group has tried in the last year. Some were better than others. The details — like the meat-to-sauerkraut ratio, toasting the bread or shaving the meat — made all the difference.
It gave high marks for every component — the corned beef, sauerkraut, Russian dressing, Swiss cheese and its toasted rye bread — to The Cornhusker's version of the iconic sandwich.
Davis was not surprised.
"I love our Reuben," Davis said. "I like that we make our corned beef from scratch. I like that we make the Russian dressing from scratch. And anything that’s on marble rye is great.
"That’s a great combination."
Amazingly, there are members of society who shy away from such a sandwich. Maybe it's the sauerkraut. More amazingly, one member of the Reuben Posse used to be one of those lost souls.
"I don’t know that I ever ordered a Reuben before I became associated with this group," Huddle said. "I just had a notion that I didn’t like them. I was wrong."
Obviously, there is no documentation to back up Evans' claim. Huddle had heard the stories of The Cornhusker's glorious corned beef history but could get no solid corroboration from family members or longtime Lincoln residents about the Reuben first being served here.
Davis said you can't spend any amount of time at The Cornhusker without hearing the stories from the longtime employees.
"There is a lot of Cornhusker lore," said Davis, who just marked her 10-year anniversary at hotel. "The people who have been here for years talk about things like that.
"I’ve heard all of the rumors over the years."
Sometimes stories are passed from generation to generation, and with each passing, they are stretched more and more.
That said, 100 years later, who knows for sure where the first Reuben was created? The East Coast snobs will say New York City. The Omaha contingency will be quick to tell you its already been proven the sandwich was first constructed at the Blackstone.Â
But what about Lincoln? It can't be simply dismissed as conjecture — the uncorroborated claims of the uninformed.
"This adds to the ongoing conversation about the Reuben," Davis said.Â