In early October, whiskey author Frank Dobbins III visited Willett Distillery in Bardstown, Ky., and posted about it on Instagram. He joined grasp distiller Drew Kulsveen for a behind-the-scenes tour. He spoke admirably of the distillery’s growth effort. He wrote glowingly of its proprietary 11-year-old distillate. But all of the commenters on Dobbins’ put up needed to speak about was an egg salad sandwich.
“Egg Salad Sandwich!!!” wrote one commenter. “That MF egg salad sandwich is so good,” wrote one other. “BEST EGG SALAD SANDWICH 🔥,” wrote one more. “All the time the egg salad,” wrote fellow drinks author Jake Emen.
Willett Distillery has lengthy been a cult sensation among the many whiskey cognoscenti. That’s largely as a result of hundreds of Willett Household Property single barrel releases over the past twenty years, every packaged in good-looking, Cognac-style bottles with cryptic labeling nearly not possible to parse for newbies. There’s even an iPhone app to assist collectors observe all of the esoteric bottlings over time. But, its distillery restaurant, often known as the Bar at Willett, has an egg salad sandwich that, over the past 5 years, has turn out to be a cult sensation in its personal proper.
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Get Ya an Egg Salad Sandwich
The Bar at Willett opened in September 2019 on the second flooring above a present store and customer’s heart, with John Sleasman as its government chef. He had beforehand labored below James Beard Award winner Sean Brock at McCrady’s in Charleston. Impressed by the Kulsveen household’s French heritage and Nordic roots, Sleasman claims he needed to supply a menu that includes approachable but complicated dishes that will pair effectively alongside the distillery’s coveted whiskeys.
The opening day menu included such dishes as nation ham unfold served with pork rinds; beef tartare served with grilled shiitake mushrooms, oyster, endive, and thinly sliced pumpernickel; and fried catfish.
There was additionally an egg salad sandwich made utilizing native eggs ready in three other ways: onerous boiled, jammed, and cured. Whereas admitting he needed to make the very best egg salad sandwich he’d ever had, Sleasman by no means anticipated it to take off the way in which it has.
“[I thought] it’s a staple in lots of Southern households and our regional visitors visiting the distillery would take pleasure in a well-known type of sandwich,” he says.
Nonetheless on the menu at this time, onerous boiled eggs are blended with applewood-smoked Duke’s Mayo, dietary yeast, smoked paprika, yellow mustard, celery salt, Champagne vinegar, and floor black pepper, then unfold between slices of toasted brioche. Your entire sandwich is then slathered with jammed egg yolks which have been blended with smoked soy sauce. Lastly, 7-day salted-cured egg yolks are microplaned atop every little thing, then garnished with minced chives.
From day one, seemingly, stories got here in from bourbon vacationers discovering the sandwich on visits to Willett.
“Get ya an egg salad sandwich whilst you wait,” wrote one man in a Sept. 17, 2019 put up on a personal Fb group completely devoted to Willett followers, the earliest on-line touting of the sandwich I can discover.
Calls imploring guests to pattern the egg salad sandwich quickly grew to become as widespread on this group as posts about esoteric single barrel numbers, the potential for present store bottle releases on any given day, and what rarities had been at present out there to drink on the bar.
“I had heard concerning the famed Willett egg salad sandwich for years, sufficient in order that I felt haunted by the ghost-like impression of a half-forgotten dream the place, absolutely, I used to be already aware of it.”
“I used to be questioning who the heck was ordering so many rattling excessive finish bottles and I’m over there on Friday simply making an attempt to take pleasure in my egg sammy,” wrote one other poster later that yr.
In a short time, egg salad sandwich dialogue escaped the realm of mere Willett stans and have become a guidelines merchandise for any and all Bourbon Path guests, no completely different than eager to get a bottle signed by Jimmy Russell at Wild Turkey or rating one’s personal private bottling at Michter’s.
Exceeding the Hype?
Like many whiskey lovers, Emen had been studying the web chatter concerning the egg salad sandwich just about for the reason that Bar at Willett’s opening day; like many obsessive foodies, he was vexed by his incapability to truly strive it. That lastly modified through the pandemic when within the fall of 2020 he was lastly in a position to go to Kentucky to report on the reopening of distilleries, one in every of which being Willett. In fact, after his journalistic work was full he headed straight for the bar.
“I had heard concerning the famed Willett egg salad sandwich for years, sufficient in order that I felt haunted by the ghost-like impression of a half-forgotten dream the place, absolutely, I used to be already aware of it,” he explains. Nonetheless, it managed to exceed the hype for him.
“It’s been a enjoyable speaking level for the employees to promote an egg salad sandwich well-known sufficient to have its personal Instagram.”
“It was revelatory, superseding the lofty, imagined standing it already held in my head,” he says, “[straddling] the road between childhood basic and elevated grownup fare on the exact level in which you’ll be able to unselfconsciously take pleasure in each realms, pretension free.”
In some ways, to have the sandwich, and put up about it on-line, grew to become proof of 1’s bourbon business bona fides. Whereas taters had been off looking for BTAC bottlings and Wellers, the true connoisseurs had at all times gravitated towards Willett, particularly the model’s extremely coveted cask-strength bourbon and rye single barrels that had been launched beginning in 2006.
“It’s that final, additional little little bit of insider’s data,” Emen says. “No, it’s not sufficient that you simply secured that much-coveted tour at Willett and tried the particular, can’t-miss gems on its epic again bar. You additionally have to order the egg salad sandwich, or else you dropped the ball proper on the finish.”
Emen additionally believes the egg salad sandwich’s aesthetic magnificence — if impossible-to-eat-with-one’s-hands plating — is another excuse it has turn out to be an internet sensation, best fodder for a social media share.
The Egg Salad Speaks
Willett is actually not unaware of the feeling it has created, even enjoying off it by adopting an Instagram account for @theegsaladsandwichatwillett. It was unofficially began by Brian Beyke, often known as @abandonbourbon on-line, who was supplying the bar with its Quills espresso on the time of its opening.
“Good day. I’m the egg salad sandwich at Willett,” learn the caption on the account’s first put up, from February 2020. It accompanied a picture of the sandwich, so zoomed-in one might see the particular person curlicues of every cured egg shaving. (In current months, a white cheese has turn out to be the garnish.)
“It’s been a enjoyable speaking level for the employees to promote an egg salad sandwich well-known sufficient to have its personal Instagram,” says Beyke.
Practically 5 years later, the account remains to be posting frequently, discovering new followers and nonetheless inflicting a Pavlovian response for many who have had it earlier than.
“We stay in troubled occasions and this sandwich is the one beacon of hope,” wrote a commenter on a current put up.
However the egg salad sandwich will not be merely an Instagram sensation nowadays. It’s touted on Twitter, Fb, and TikTok; mentioned on bourbon sub-reddits and even nerdier bourbon message boards.
Non-bourbon business content material creators have made the pilgrimage to strive it, too. Like Luke Collins, he of the @lukefoods TikTok account with 1.1 million followers, who had it again in August. The congenial TikToker effusively praised the sandwich, giving it a “9.2 out of 10,” as he gorged on it in his automobile.
It has begun to make extra mainstream lists as effectively, like a current “The most effective locations to eat egg salad within the US” listicle featured on Mashed. There, it appeared alongside sandwiches from big-city eating places in San Francisco, Manhattan, Atlanta, and Houston.
TripAdviser evaluations for the Bar at Willett virtually at all times point out the egg salad sandwich as effectively, many even together with it within the title of their critiques (“Greatest Egg Salad!,” “The most effective Egg Salad ever,” or, merely “Egg Salad.”)
“[T]he egg salad sandwich has so many ranges of flavors that it’s up there with Japanese requirements,” wrote one reviewer. “[T]he egg salad sandwich is off the charts!” wrote one other, whereas one more famous that “different reviewers, plus distillery tour employees, weren’t kidding after they mentioned the egg salad sandwich was the very best they’ve ever tasted.”
As do consumer posts on Yelp, the place the egg salad sandwich is at present talked about in 72 out of 143 restaurant evaluations whereas a picture of it seems in 46 of these. An insane batting common, all of the extra in order it comes from perhaps probably the most critically acclaimed distillery within the nation.
Although, as a current YouTuber, in reviewing the distillery, famous, “The piece de resistance at Willett will not be the bourbon, it’s the egg salad sandwich!”
