What is arguably Louisville, Kentucky’s most iconic dish had a most unusual beginning.

It was created by a chef who was bored with serving up the same meal night after night to hungry people who had just finished dancing, a hotel employee with knowledge of the topic told Fox News Digital.

In 1926, The Brown Hotel in Louisville had a nightly dinner dance, which brought in crowds of more than 1,200 each night, according to the hotel’s website. 

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As the night stretched into morning, the patrons danced up quite an appetite and went down to the hotel’s restaurant for a bite to eat, the website said.

The chef, Fred Schmidt, soon grew frustrated with serving ham and eggs, the popular dish at the time. So he decided to improvise with ingredients he had on hand, Marc Salmon, human resources director at The Brown Hotel, told Fox News Digital in a phone interview.

Schmidt sliced the crusts off a thick piece of bread and put them in a ceramic skillet. 

He sliced turkey and put it on top of the bread, sliced a tomato in half, and then poured Mornay sauce on top and stuck it under the broiler. 

When it emerged, he added even more cheese. 

The Hot Brown was born. 

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Nearly 100 years later, the Hot Brown is still being served at The Brown Hotel, largely unchanged from its original recipe – except that the dish now comes topped with two slices of bacon arranged in an X. 

Nearly a century later, it remains a culinary staple in Louisville and Kentucky. 

“Legend has it that a server … walked past it and said, ‘It’s all the same color,’” Salmon said. 

“And so Schmidt said, ‘Fine’ — and put two slices of bacon on the top.” 

The Hot Brown was immediately a hit, Salmon said. Nearly a century later, it remains a culinary staple in Louisville and Kentucky. 

The Hot Brown sandwich has since become an iconic food in Louisville and throughout Kentucky.  (Phil Vettel/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

“Whenever we hire a chef, we tell him, ‘You can do anything you want, but you can’t mess with the Hot Brown,’” Salmon said. “It’s got to be the original recipe.”

At The Brown Hotel, each Hot Brown sandwich is served with “seven ounces of hand-carved turkey breast,” Salmon told Fox News Digital. 

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“One of the things that makes our [sandwich] very different from the imitators is that it’s fresh turkey breast that we’re roasting here in the kitchen and hand carving,” he said.

Only one or two people at the hotel are permitted to make the Mornay sauce, Salmon said, so that it stays consistent across the day. 

“We serve it breakfast, lunch, dinner, [at] banquets, late night,” he said. 

Legend has it that the characteristic “X” of bacon strips was a later addition to the sandwich.  (Chris Witzke)

A Mornay sauce, Salmon said, is when shredded cheese is added to a béchamel sauce. 

In the case of the Hot Brown, the chef adds Pecorino Romano, as well as nutmeg.

The nutmeg is “an interesting little secret to the sauce,” he said. 

Salmon said he believes the Hot Brown has remained popular as it is “very authentic to the town.”

He also told Fox News Digital, “When you live and work in a town that produces a great spirit like bourbon, craftsmanship is really important in this town. I think the fact that it’s so uniquely ‘us’ is what’s kept it alive.” 

A scenic view of Louisville, Kentucky. “When you live and work in a town that produces a great spirit like bourbon, craftsmanship is really important in this town. I think the fact that it’s so uniquely ‘us’ is what’s kept it alive,” said Marc Salmon, human resources director at The Brown Hotel in Louisville, about the Hot Brown dish.  (Louisville Tourism)

Still, like many unique foods, the Hot Brown has its critics.

John Wise, an Ohio native who spent several years living and working in Louisville, recently shared on social media that he is “not a fan” of the Hot Brown.

“It’s a fork-and-knife operation.”

“Ingredients are all good, but why is it open-faced? Soggy bread is somehow good?” he wrote.

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And while the Hot Brown is technically a sandwich – albeit an open-faced one – it should not be eaten with one’s hands, Salmon said. 

“It’s a fork-and-knife operation,” he said. 

A teen is recovering from injuries to his right leg after a shark attack at a North Carolina beach on Sunday afternoon. 

North Topsail Beach Police Chief William Younginer told Fox News Digital that he raced to the scene in Onslow County, where 14-year-old Blayne Brown had been bitten.

“I ran up to an emergency on the beach. The [police] officers [also] ran out,” he said. “There was a 14-year-old male that had been bitten by a shark.”

The attack occurred around 12:30 p.m. at North Topsail Beach, near Beach Access No. 4 in Onslow County. 

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“We heard a lot of commotion and everybody yelling, ‘Get out of the water! Shark, shark!” witness Chasity Keeter told WRAL-TV. “It was really scary.”

Brown was reportedly visiting from West Virginia. 

“I was in the water, like screaming for help,” Brown told WWAY-TV3. “People just looked at me, and thought I was just screaming to be screaming. Like, I didn’t even know there was a shark that bit me. It just scared me so bad.”

The shark bit Brown twice, once on the leg and again on the ankle.

Fortunately, two police officers and an EMS officer were already present on the scene from a previous unrelated distress call.

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“Bystanders had pulled him out, and they were wrapping a towel around him and stopping the bleeding, which is the right thing to do,” Younginer said. “That’s [exactly] what they should have done.” 

A tiger shark swims in the Atlantic Ocean. (Reinhard Dirscherl/ullstein bild via Getty Images)

Two officers applied a tourniquet to Brown, and he was transported to nearby Naval Medical Center Camp Lejeune, where he is recovering from his injuries.

Younginer shared that shark attacks are extremely rare in the area.

“We have some people that step on a stingray, things like that, but we haven’t had [a shark attack],” he said. “I’ve been here since 2018. We haven’t had a shark bite.”

Younginer said Brown is expected to be released from the hospital soon.

Florida’s top prosecutor hopes a few hot hands can solve some of the state’s coldest cases.

State Attorney General Ashley Moody said she plans to distribute 5,000 decks of cards inside jails and prisons featuring photos and information about unsolved crimes – including homicides and missing-persons cases.

In a statement announcing the initiative, Moody said she hopes the cards will jog some old memories that could spur fresh leads.

“I have seen so many stalled investigations get new life after someone came forward with groundbreaking information. Sometimes that new information comes from criminals or co-conspirators who have a change of conscience, or maybe they are motivated by a reward,” Moody said. 

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Dormant cases, she added, aren’t always revitalized by high-tech forensics.

“We are giving cold case cards to inmates, but we are not playing games. This low-tech approach to generating tips may prove to be an ace up the sleeve as we continue to bring finality to seemingly unbreakable cases,” she said.

The decks will be given to prisoners at 60 county jails and 145 facilities managed by the state Corrections Department.

Moody said her office will collaborate with the Florida Association of Crime Stoppers, Florida Sheriffs Association, the state’s Corrections Department and also Season of Justice, a nonprofit group dedicated to keeping cold cases warm.

Florida cited the success of the strategy in other states.

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Florida officials are giving out playing cards to inmates featuring information on cold cases and missing-persons cases to help solve stalled investigations. (Florida Association of Crime Stoppers)

Connecticut investigators, officials said, solved 20 cold cases through the initiative. South Carolina dealt the cards and cracked eight stalled investigations.

Florida will offer $9,500 jackpots for tips that result in arrests, and informants can maintain their anonymity.

Moody noted that a prior version of the program launched in 2007 helped to solve a Florida murder.

Construction workers found Ingrid Lugo, 34, dead in a retention pond in Bradenton, about 45 miles south of Tampa, in 2004.

The case had gone cold when she was featured in a deck of playing cards distributed in 2007.

An inmate who came across the six of spades alerted officials that he served time with a man named Bryan Curry and believed he was involved in the slaying.

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Joe Winkler, assistant secretary of the Florida Department of Corrections, announces a new initiative to distribute playing cards featuring cold cases and missing-persons cases to inmates. (Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office)

After Lugo called off their engagement, Curry strangled her to death. He was arrested and ultimately convicted of murder after a 2008 trial. He was sentenced to life in prison.

In another example of the program’s success, an arrest was made in the 2004 murder of retiree James Foote after an inmate saw a seven of clubs that summarized the killing. Foote had been found in a Fort Myers parking lot with a gunshot wound to his chest.

The Lake City prison inmate told authorities that Derrick Hamilton had boasted to others about the crime.

He was arrested in 2007, pleaded no contest and was sentenced to four years in prison.

Law enforcement agencies in Polk County, Florida, were the first to distribute cold case playing cards to inmates in 2005, which led to the resolution of four unsolved crimes.

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These playing cards feature information on homicide victims and missing persons. (Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office)

According to the nonprofit Project Cold Case, the rate at which homicides are being solved in the U.S. has declined by more than 20% over the past five decades.

More than 72% of homicides were solved in 1980 compared to just 51% in 2021. To address this, Moody announced in February a new state cold case investigations unit.

“This effort aims to address some of Florida’s most haunting cold case homicides,” Moody said in a statement. “By spotlighting these cases within correctional and detention facilities, the collective hope is to generate leads that will aid in solving them, offering much-needed closure to the families and loved ones of the victims.”