Horseshoe Sandwich

The horseshoe sandwich is an open-faced sandwich from Springfield, Illinois, in which a thick slice of toasted bread is topped with a meat (most often a hamburger patty or a slice of ham), a layer of crispy French fries, and a generous pour of a cheese sauce called Welsh rarebit. The dish was invented in the late 1920s at the old Leland Hotel by a chef named Joe Schweska and has been a fixture of central-Illinois cafeterias and supper clubs ever since. A smaller version with one piece of toast and a single meat is called a "pony shoe."

The key to a proper horseshoe is the sauce: a sharp cheddar cheese sauce made with beer, dry mustard, Worcestershire sauce, and a small amount of cayenne, ladled hot over the meat and fries at the last moment so the fries stay crisp and the sauce stays loose. The meat choice varies — ground beef, sliced ham, breaded pork tenderloin, grilled chicken, and even a fried fish fillet are all common, and most restaurants will let you substitute a "rooster" version (with two slices of Texas toast instead of one) for a more substantial plate. The fries are traditionally thick-cut steakhouse fries, sometimes shoestring, sometimes waffle-cut.

Springfield remains the capital of the horseshoe: try it at the D&J Cafeteria on MacArthur Boulevard, the long-running Cozy Dog Drive-In on S. Dirksen Parkway, the Dublin Pub on South Sixth Street, and at the Old State Capitol Farmers' Market during summer festival weekends. Variations of the dish can also be found in Peoria, Bloomington-Normal, Champaign-Urbana, and Decatur, and on a few oddball menus as far away as Madison, Wisconsin, and Tucson, Arizona, where the format has been adopted for local sandwich traditions.