Elvis Presley's Real Favorite Sandwich Used An Entire Loaf Of Bread
Elvis Presley was known, especially in his later years, to have a voracious appetite. "He said that the only thing in life he got any enjoyment out of was eating, his former cook Mary Jenkins Langston recalled in "The Burger and the King," a 1996 BBC documentary (via The New York Times). "And he liked his food real rich."
Much has been made about Elvis' love of the fried banana and peanut butter sandwich, which Jenkins perfected for him using a whopping two sticks of butter to make three sandwiches. But there is another sandwich that the King loved: It was called the Fool's Gold Loaf and, like the fried banana sandwich, it too incorporated peanut butter — and not just a little. We are talking about Elvis here. The Fool's Gold Loaf included such a prodigious amount of peanut butter, jelly, and bacon that the sandwich required an entire loaf of bread to support the ingredients. While this behemoth may be a strange offshoot in the evolutionary line of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, Elvis was a big fan.
The sandwich originated in Denver
Elvis Presley first discovered the sandwich during a tour stop near Denver, Colorado. The Fool's Gold Loaf was the specialty of the Colorado Gold Mine Company Steakhouse in the Denver suburb of Glendale. It was a mammoth sandwich that Nick Andurlakis, who worked at the restaurant, described as a "ginormous, artery-hardening contraption" (via The Denver Gazette).
The ingredients were simple: a hollowed-out Italian loaf filled with an entire jar of peanut butter, an entire jar of jelly, and a pound of bacon. The serving size of Elvis' favorite sandwich was the whole loaf, and the cost was $49.95, or the equivalent of nearly $275 today. One late night in February 1976, Elvis just had to have another one. Being Elvis, he and his entourage flew to Denver from Memphis to quench his desire for the hunk a hunk a burnin' love in sandwich form. They arrived in Colorado at 1:40 a.m. to feast on somewhere between 20 and 30 of the sandwiches — washed down with a case of champagne — at the airport before flying back to Memphis.
Nick's Cafe continued the tradition
Nick Andurlakis delivered the infamous Fool's Gold sandwiches to the King that morning in 1976, an experience that had life-changing repercussions for Andurlakis. After the Colorado Gold Mine Company closed down, Andurlakis opened his own place, Nick's Cafe, in nearby Golden, where he continued to offer a version of the Fool's Gold Loaf. Unfortunately, Andurlakis closed his Elvis-memorabilia-bedecked cafe in March 2022 after more than 30 years in business.
If you want to experience this delicacy, you'll have to make it at home. There are at least two variations. What might be termed the official version can be found in the 1995 book "The Life and Cuisine of Elvis Presley." This recipe calls for buttering the outside of an entire Italian loaf, and heating it in a 350-degree Fahrenheit oven for 15 minutes before slicing it lengthwise, hollowing it out, and filling it with a jar full of peanut butter, a jar full of grape jelly, and a pound of crisp bacon.
Andurlakis' version differs in several respects. He made his version as a triple-decker sandwich by slicing the unheated loaf into three layers and using strawberry jam instead of grape jelly or blueberry jam, which some sources cite as the original flavor.