A Hot Brown is a hot sandwich originally created at the Brown Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, by Fred K. Schmidt in 1926.The Hot Brown is an open-faced sandwich of turkey and bacon, covered in mornay sauce and baked or broiled until the bread is crisp and the sauce begins to brown. Many Hot Browns also include ham with the turkey, and either pimentos or tomatoes over the sauce, and imitation Hot Browns sometimes substitute a commercial cheese sauce instead of the mornay sauce, but fans of the dish usually decry this substitution. Some restaurants even offer a 'veggie brown' nowadays to attract vegetarians as the recipe is easy to modify with avocado, or, less commonly, soy burger.The dish is a local specialty and favorite of the Louisville area, and is popular throughout Kentucky.On menus within the Louisville area, the Hot Brown often appears as titled "Louisville Hot Brown", elsewhere in Kentucky outside Louisville as the "Kentucky Hot Brown" and outside the commonwealth simply as "Hot Brown."The Hot Brown has been seen in an episode of Throwdown! with Bobby Flay on the Food Network. Joe and John Castro, Hot Brown chefs of the Brown Hotel in Kentucky, competed with Flay in a cook-off of Hot Browns. The natives of Kentucky came through and won the challenge of this indigenous dish. The Hot Brown was also featured on the Travel Channel network show Taste of America with Mark DeCarlo. See alsoCuisine of KentuckyHistory of Louisville, KentuckyMelt sandwich