New Jersey's Best Sloppy Joe Comes With An Unusual Local Twist

The thought of a sloppy joe sandwich might bring back memories of a school cafeteria lunch consisting of gloppy mystery meat on a bun. Or maybe you think of Manwich, the popular brand of canned sloppy joe sauce. Regardless, the traditional version contains ground beef and a tomato-based sauce on a hamburger bun. What if I told you my favorite sloppy joe in the Garden State contains none of those ingredients?

That's because I'm from Essex County, New Jersey, where this sandwich contains two types of deli meat (often turkey with pastrami, corned beef, or roast beef) piled onto a multi-tiered sandwich made with rye bread, cheese, Russian dressing, and cole slaw. Essex County has multiple spots to find a great Jersey-style sloppy joe, but the best example in the area comes from a place that claims to have invented the sandwich: South Orange, New Jersey's Town Hall Deli.

Don't just go into the Town Hall Deli and order a sloppy joe, though. The deli, in business since 1927, has no fewer than 11 different variants on the menu. Some feature such pairings as egg salad with salmon or ham with beef tounge. Plus, you can create your own take on the sandwich. Town Hall Deli says its whole joes, which run about $35, feed two to three people. The half ($19) ones are the size of a large regular deli sandwich. In other words, bring an appetite, bring some friends, or bring sloppy joe leftovers home.

Entering Town Hall Deli is like stepping back in time. Located on an unassuming street in downtown South Orange, this small establishment has black-and-white ceramic floor tiles and a faux pressed-tin ceiling. Despite receiving local and national recognition for its excellence,  it feels less like a tourist destination and more like a neighborhood sandwich joint.

My top sandwich choice is the Favorite Joe, which boasts buttery-tender roast beef, flavorful roast turkey, and Swiss cheese. The rye bread, cut into squares from long slices, is soft but hearty enough to stand up to the stacks of meat piled on. The cole slaw and Russian dressing are both mildly sweet and noticeably tangy, providing great contrast. And for the maximum joe experience, you can wash the sandwich down with Joe Tea — a local brand of iced tea sold at the deli.

Town Hall isn't the only place in the county to get an excellent sloppy joe. At Fairchilds Marketplace in Roseland, 9 miles north, you can also get a half or whole joe with any two deli meats on the menu. (Fairchilds calls its sandwich "the original sloppy joe," but doesn't dispute Town Hall's invention claim.) Just beyond Fairchilds, you can also find an excellent joe at the Caldwell Diner in Caldwell, New Jersey — though the diner's version is single-tier and served on a regular slice of rye instead of square-cut long slices.

As with so many regional food items, this iconic New Jersey food doesn't have a clear and well-documented history. But the legend of the sandwich goes something like this: In the 1930s, Thomas Sweeney, the mayor of the Newark suburb of Maplewood, visited a bar in Havana, Cuba, called Sloppy Joe's. That establishment served him a sandwich he couldn't forget when he returned home to suburban New Jersey, and he visited the Town Hall Deli in South Orange, the next town over, to commission them to re-make the sandwich. The original sandwich, named after the Havana bar, contained beef tongue, ham, Swiss, cole slaw, and Russian dressing.

Is any of that true? Well, Thomas Sweeney was the mayor of Maplewood, and there was a bar called Sloppy Joe's in Havana. These days, that's about as much as the evidence confirms. Not even the Town Hall Deli team is certain. "No one has a clear story about the sandwiches," vice president Matt Wonski told Taste in 2019. 

There's no clear explanation for why this sandwich is different from the mainstream version, but there is an interesting twist. The more famous ground beef sloppy joe is said to be named after the same Havana bar. Similarly, though, there are multiple stories and much debate over exactly how the ground beef sandwich got its name.