The Reuben sandwich has a straightforward ingredient list and a remarkably complicated backstory. Corned beef, sauerkraut, Swiss cheese, and Russian or Thousand Island dressing meet on grilled rye, but who first assembled them has sparked competing claims from Omaha and New York City. Nebraska has early menus supporting its connection to the sandwich; New York has a restaurateur named Arnold Reuben and a family story reaching back to 1914. Neither account provides a universally accepted, fully documented moment of invention.
That uncertainty explains why the argument keeps returning. People are debating several questions at once: who first combined the ingredients, who named the sandwich, and whose creation most closely resembles the Reuben we recognize today. Even Omaha’s supporters disagree about whether a poker player or a hotel cook deserves the credit. Add family pride, regional identity, and historians searching for dated evidence, and an otherwise ordinary lunch becomes an unexpectedly spirited contest over American food history.
The sandwich’s familiar deli identity can make New York seem like the obvious answer, but familiarity doesn’t prove its birthplace. Britannica identifies the Reuben as a staple in Jewish delicatessens while noting that its traditional combination of meat and cheese is not kosher. Its modern restaurant setting therefore does not neatly resolve its history. To understand the dispute, look past where people commonly order it now and examine the stories and documents behind the rival claims.
Omaha’s Story Starts With a Poker Game and Its Own Disagreement
The Omaha account places the sandwich at the Blackstone Hotel during a late-night poker game in the 1920s. Reuben Kulakofsky, a local grocer, wanted something to eat, and Charles Schimmel owned the hotel. Charles’s son, Bernard, had trained in hospitality in Lausanne, Switzerland, before working in the hotel kitchen. The exact year varies by source: History Nebraska recounts a 1925 origin story, while Britannica dates Bernard’s creation to 1928. That discrepancy is worth preserving rather than quietly choosing whichever date sounds most precise.
Writer Elizabeth Weil, Bernard Schimmel’s granddaughter, described her family’s version in a 2013 New York Times Magazine essay and a longer 2016 Saveur article. In that telling, Bernard assembled corned beef, Swiss cheese, sauerkraut, and Russian dressing on rye, then pressed the sandwich hot for Kulakofsky. “The sandwich went on all the hotel menus,” Weil wrote in Saveur. Her account is valuable testimony to the Schimmel family’s story, but her relationship to the claimed inventor is also important context—and not something to leave out.
The Kulakofsky family has offered a different version of the same evening. According to Weil, relatives maintained that Bernard delivered a deli platter and that Reuben assembled the sandwich himself. This is not simply Nebraska versus New York; it is also a question of credit within the Nebraska story. Was the decisive contribution requesting the ingredients, arranging them, cooking the finished sandwich, or putting it on a menu? Those distinctions help explain why identifying the person behind the name does not automatically identify the inventor.
New York’s Claim Has an Earlier Date but Different Ingredients
The New York account centers on Arnold Reuben, whose namesake restaurant served celebrity customers. According to the story, he made a special sandwich around 1914 for an actress associated with Charlie Chaplin. The crucial complication is what it contained: ham, turkey, Swiss cheese, coleslaw, and Russian dressing on rye. That may be an ancestor or relative of the modern Reuben, but it is not the same corned-beef-and-sauerkraut combination. A sandwich bearing Reuben’s name and the sandwich now called a Reuben are not necessarily identical.
Food historian Andrew Smith initially challenged Weil’s Omaha account, arguing for New York and pointing to a 1941 cookbook, Menu Making for Professionals in Quantity Cookery, by J.O. Dahl. It contained a recognizable Reuben formula, and Dahl lived in New York. In correspondence reproduced by Weil, Smith called himself “a pedantic culinary historian” and asked for primary sources predating that recipe. His challenge shifted the debate from a contest between memorable family stories to a search for material that could actually be dated.
Smith also identified other sandwiches on Arnold Reuben’s menu that shared ingredients with the classic. Weil, however, questioned whether overlapping components established invention, particularly when examples used mustard and coleslaw instead of Russian dressing and sauerkraut. The distinction matters because restaurants can serve similar combinations without one documented act of creation. History Nebraska’s assessment is cautious: evidence shows a sandwich resembling the Reuben at Arnold’s restaurants, but family stories support his claim to having created the classic.
Related: 10 Weird Sandwiches From History, Ranked By How Much You Want To Try Them
Old Menus Strengthened Omaha’s Case but Didn’t Solve Everything
The most consequential turn in Weil’s investigation came when her husband, Dan, contacted Nebraska historical organizations. Weil reported that the Douglas County Historical Society found a 1934 Blackstone dining-room menu listing a Reuben for 40 cents. She also described a 1937 Blackstone coffee-shop menu offering it for 35 cents. Britannica independently recounts the discovery of the 1934 menu. These records place a named Reuben in Omaha before the 1941 cookbook Smith had cited, substantially strengthening Nebraska’s documentary case.
Smith acknowledged the significance of those finds in correspondence published by Weil: “These are the earliest references for a specific ‘Reuben sandwich,’ and they do indeed support your grandfather’s claim to naming a sandwich!” Notice the wording: support for naming a sandwich is not an unconditional declaration that every detail of the family’s invention story is proven. The menus establish documented existence at a particular time and place. They do not reconstruct the poker game or settle which participant first assembled the ingredients.
One later milestone is much less tangled. In 1956, waitress Fern Snider entered the Reuben in the National Sandwich Idea Contest, and it won, helping bring the hotel-associated sandwich broader attention. The enduring dispute is therefore about origins, not whether Nebraska played a meaningful role in its history. Omaha has strong early documentation; New York has a competing family account involving a different recipe. The Reuben’s backstory remains contentious because old menus can preserve a sandwich’s name and price far more reliably than they can preserve its first bite.
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