The sloppy joe has two rival origin stories. One places its birth in Havana around 1917, at a bar whose owner was nicknamed Sloppy Joe. The other points to Sioux City, Iowa, in the 1930s, where a cook named Joe is said to have turned a loose meat sandwich into something wetter and redder.
Neither story has been proved, and a third thread runs through Key West, where Ernest Hemingway’s friend Joe Russell ran a bar called Sloppy Joe’s. Here is how the competing accounts line up.
The Havana claim
According to Wikipedia’s article on the sandwich, one theory credits José “Sloppy Joe” Abeal y Otero, owner of Sloppy Joe’s Bar in Havana, with creating around 1917 “a simple sandwich filled with ground beef stewed in tomatoes.” The article says that may have been based on ropa vieja or picadillo.
The food site The Takeout, in a 2018 piece on the sandwich’s history, says Abeal Otero opened the Havana bar between 1917 and 1919, depending on the account. Regulars nicknamed him Sloppy Joe, and he renamed the bar after the nickname. The same piece says the Havana restaurant closed in 1959 and reopened in 2013. Food-history fans can find more surprises in 12 laws and rules about food in other countries.
The bar’s own story, as told by the Key West Sloppy Joe’s history page, differs on the name. It credits Jose Garcia, owner of a Havana club that sold liquor and iced seafood. Patrons teased this “Spanish Joe” that his place was sloppy because the floor was always wet with melted ice, and the name stuck. That page does not mention the sandwich.
The Sioux City claim
The Iowa story starts with a different sandwich. The Takeout says loose meat sandwiches emerged around the 1920s as an economical, filling meal. Under the Sioux City theory, a cook named Joe added tomato sauce in the 1930s and created the sloppy joe. Cooks who grew up on a family recipe may recognize the spirit in 10 kitchen staples grandmothers kept within arm’s reach. Foodies who like regional sandwiches may enjoy 15 foods from the 60s that most boomers loved.
The Sioux City version is tied to the Heinz company. Wikipedia quotes Heinz’s Marilyn Brown saying research at the Carnegie Library points to “loose meat sandwiches” sold in Sioux City in the 1930s, created by a cook named Joe. The source for that claim is Jean Anderson’s The American Century Cookbook.
The loose meat sandwich itself has a documented Iowa history. Wikipedia’s article on the tavern sandwich says David Heglin sold it at his Sioux City restaurant in 1924 and is credited with the name tavern. It adds that Abe Kaled bought the business in 1934 and renamed it Ye Olde Tavern after the sandwich. It also says Fred Angell began selling a version as a loose meat sandwich at the first Maid-Rite in Muscatine, Iowa, in 1926. The article notes that the tavern sandwich resembles a sloppy joe but has no tomato-based sauce.
That last point is the heart of the dispute. Without a tomato sauce, the Iowa sandwich is a cousin rather than the same dish, which leaves the Havana version with the stronger claim to tomato and beef together and the Iowa version with the stronger claim to a loose, spoonable meat sandwich. A related look at home dining habits is in the Sunday family dinner and the changes that made it fade.
The Hemingway twist in Key West
Hemingway is the character who links the stories, and famous names attach to many dishes, as in 12 stories from history people keep getting wrong. The Hemingway Home and Museum says he arrived in Key West in April 1928 by way of Havana, which it calls critically important to his later life. It lists Joe Russell, also known as Sloppy Joe, among his friends in a group he called the Mob.
The Takeout says Hemingway, who reportedly loved the Havana bar, convinced Russell to rename his 1930s Key West bar, the Silver Slipper, to Sloppy Joe’s and to serve the sandwich. Wikipedia dates that to around 1937. The Key West bar says on its history page that it officially began on Dec. 5, 1933, the day Prohibition was repealed, when Russell, a Key West native and former rumrunner, opened it as a legitimate business.
The bar’s page adds that the original location was 428 Greene Street, leased for $3 a week, and that the room was known as the Blind Pig and later the Silver Slipper. On May 5, 1937, Russell bought the former Victoria Restaurant at Duval and Greene Streets for $2,500 and moved the bar’s contents overnight to 201 Duval Street, keeping the bar open during the move.
The bar’s own account gives the name as older than the 1937 renaming story, so the Hemingway version remains one telling among several.
Cookbooks, ads and the name
Early printed recipes complicate the picture. Wikipedia says the earliest cookbook it cites is Sarah Tyson Rorer’s New Cook Book from 1902, which includes a sloppy joe-type recipe under the name “Minced Beef Spanish Style.” Other cookbooks of the period used other names: “Hamburg a la Creole” in Prudence Penny’s Cookbook in 1939, “Chopped Meat Sandwiches” in Young America’s Cook Book in 1940, and “Spanish Hamburgers” in the 1944 Good Housekeeping Cook Book.
The name shows up in other places too. A Pittsburgh Press ad from Oct. 8, 1940, used Sloppy Joe as the name of a women’s cardigan sweater. A Coshocton Tribune ad from Oct. 29, 1944, advertised Sloppy Joes at The Hamburg Shop under the heading “Originated in Cuba.”
Packaged versions followed. Wikipedia says companies began selling sloppy joe sauce and canned filling in the 1960s, including Manwich, and that the 1975 Dictionary of American Slang defined a sloppy joe as a cheap restaurant or lunch counter serving cheap food quickly.
What can be said for sure
The sandwich’s own history is a puzzle with no single answer. A Havana bar owner nicknamed Sloppy Joe is credited by one theory, a Sioux City cook named Joe by another, and a Key West bar owner named Joe Russell by a third thread. Each story uses the same first name, which helps explain how the tales kept getting tangled.
What the documents show is narrower. A sloppy joe-type ground beef recipe appears in a cookbook by 1902 under another name, the name Sloppy Joe appears in print by 1940 and 1944, and a loose meat sandwich was on sale in Sioux City by 1924. Who first put the name and the tomato sauce together is still open.
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
Image: jeffreyw – CC BY 2.0/Wikimedia Commons
