The hot brown came out of the broiler still bubbling at the edges, in an oval dish too hot to touch, and Nora took eleven pictures of it before anybody was allowed to pick up a fork. That was 8:00 on a Friday night in downtown Louisville, and it was the reason we had driven 210 miles after Ryan's shift.
Ryan's cousin Shane lives in Louisville and has been telling us to come up for two years. His offer was a couch, an air mattress and a driveway for the Pilot. Our offer was to buy his dinner. That is the cheapest night of lodging we will ever get, and it's why this whole trip came to $268.
Friday: the hot brown
We left Spring Hill at 3:00 on July 18 and went straight up I-65, through Bowling Green and over the Kentucky line. Waylon stayed with Deb and Marcus next door. Louisville is on Eastern time, so we rolled downtown a little after 7:15 and met Shane at the hotel where the hot brown was invented, back in the 1920s, as a late supper for people who had been out dancing.
If you have never had one: a hot brown is an open-faced sandwich served in its own dish. Thick toast goes on the bottom, then a pile of sliced roast turkey, then Mornay sauce, which is a white sauce with cheese stirred in. The whole thing goes under the broiler, then gets two strips of bacon across the top and tomato alongside. The broiler is what makes it. The milk and cheese brown in a couple of minutes into a spotted, almost crackly top while everything underneath stays soft. It's rich enough that I think of it as dinner and a nap in one dish.
We ordered three for five people. Ryan and Shane each got their own, Nora and I split one, and Jack ordered chicken tenders, with a condition. Our family rule on trips is one bite of the local thing, then order whatever you want. Jack's one bite turned into four. He named it "the cheese turkey toast," gave it an 8 and said it would have been a 9 without the tomato. Nora doesn't rank food, but she did ask if I could make it at home. With the tip, dinner was $98.
Saturday: the bat and the Ali Center
Breakfast was a box of doughnuts from a shop near Shane's house, $14, which we paid for over his objections. Then we went back downtown to West Main Street, where a giant baseball bat, about 120 feet tall, leans against the front of the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory. Nora made Jack stand at the bottom of it for a photo, and he made the face of a boy who wants to go inside right now.
We split up there. Ryan and Jack took the museum and factory tour, two tickets for about $35, and watched bats being turned on a lathe. Everybody on the tour gets a little bat at the end, and Jack slept with his that night. I have asked him to stop pointing it at his sister.
Nora, Shane and I walked a few blocks to the Muhammad Ali Center. Shane has a membership and brought us in as his guests, which is the only reason our admissions line is so short. We watched old fight footage and read about Ali's life from Louisville onward, and Nora took a picture of the wall about his six core principles, confidence and respect among them, to tape inside her locker this fall. We met back up for sandwiches at a deli downtown, $41 for five of us, and were back on I-65 by 2:00.
Twenty-four hours, door to door. One sandwich invented in a hotel, one bat museum and one very tired family. Somewhere around Bowling Green on the drive home I started thinking about what a hot brown could do with Thanksgiving leftovers, which is a problem for November.
What it cost
- Gas: $57 (about 440 miles round trip, roughly 20 gallons at $2.85)
- Lodging: $0 (Shane's couch, air mattress and driveway; we bought his dinner)
- Food: $168 (hot browns and dinner $98, doughnuts $14, deli lunch $41, road snacks $15)
- Admissions: $35 (two Slugger tour tickets; Shane's membership covered the Ali Center)
- Parking: $8 (a downtown garage on Saturday)
- Total: $268
- Food per person: $42 for the four of us, with Shane's dinner counted as rent
