9 Sandwiches Eaten By US Presidents That Are Etched Into History Forever

Sandwiches have been around for a lot longer than most people know. While many think of the 4th Earl of Sandwich, John Montagu, as the inventor, he merely popularized the idea of eating a filling between two pieces of bread. Earlier references to sandwich-like concoctions and wrap-style meals exist in texts dating back to the 1st century B.C. Even Montagu had seen them before his infamous gambling session, in which he supposedly asked for food between bread so that he could keep gambling. Apparently he had seen smaller sandwiches and pitas when he'd visited countries in the Mediterranean, so his idea was nothing new — just a copy.

After the 1700s, sandwiches were initially known as food for people drinking heavily at parties, and later as restaurant food that people didn't yet make at home. The dish soon became more mainstream, eventually turning into a staple meal for everyone regardless of social status, age, or level of alcohol consumption. Sandwiches have become such a normal part of daily life that it's common to see presidents stopping at restaurants to order a favorite before continuing on their way. Some sandwiches eaten by presidents, though, have stood out. Sometimes, it's because the president's love of the recipe was so well-known, but other times, the sandwiches had an effect — albeit indirect — on political dealings. Here are nine sandwiches eaten by U.S. presidents that are now a part of history.

There's debate over whether a hot dog is also a sandwich or taco — although a court once ruled that a taco is a Mexican-style sandwich, so if a hot dog were a taco, that would also make it a sandwich — but let's consider it a sandwich here. After all, when this particular hot-dog picnic with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British King George VI occurred, one reporter from "The New York Times" wrote that the king came back "for more hot-dog sandwiches."

In September 1938, the king and queen were planning a visit to Canada, and FDR invited them to visit Washington, D.C. Keep in mind that U.S.-U.K. relations weren't as close then as they have been for the past several decades; no British monarch had visited the U.S. since the American colonies broke away and formed a new country. When the pair arrived in June 1939, FDR held a picnic for them and other guests on June 11. The main course was hot dogs, plus beer to wash them down. The king apparently loved them, going back for seconds as previously mentioned. The relaxed nature of the picnic and camaraderie between the royals and the Roosevelts went a long way toward making the royals and the U.K. seem much more familiar and friendly to the American public. Once the U.K. was at war with Germany, Americans were much more sympathetic to the British than they might have been, had the picnic never happened.

While those hot dogs played a part in changing history, FDR's consumption of grilled cheese wasn't quite as politically motivated. The thing about grilled cheese is that, if you look up FDR and sandwiches, you will find a lot of references to him liking grilled cheese. No politics, no eating grilled cheese for the cameras to show solidarity with the working class — nothing like that. He just really liked grilled cheese, and the Roosevelts apparently adored cheese as a whole. They usually had cheese available if they wanted snacks, and Welsh rarebit, a dish of hot cheese served over toasted bread, was a frequent Sunday night meal.

Other than peanut butter and jelly, grilled cheese is about as humble a sandwich as can be. You could already find versions of melted cheese on bread in different cuisines before grilled cheese as we know it came into being; the croque monsieur with its melted cheese, sauce, and ham between slices of bread and cheese dreams (an open-faced version of grilled cheese) were already popular. After the advent of the Great Depression, the buttery and crispy grilled cheese with processed cheese and two slices of bread became a cheap yet filling food that even poorer people could access. Even now, it remains a comfort-food favorite that people frequently eat.

Sometimes, a sandwich makes history just because it happened to be what someone ate during a history-making moment. That's the case for a ham sandwich (some sources say a ham and cheese sandwich) that Harry Truman ate the night of the 1948 election. That's the infamous election in which a newspaper prematurely printed a lot of papers with the headline, "Dewey Defeats Truman!" Just about every account of the details of that night mention that Truman ate the sandwich before going to bed at a hotel because he wasn't going to wait up for the results.

The story goes that on November 2, 1948, Truman quietly left either his home or his campaign headquarters and went to Excelsior Springs, Missouri. He checked into the Elms Hotel, had the sandwich and some milk (or buttermilk) for dinner, and then went to sleep. It wasn't looking like Truman would win — he woke up once, saw he was ahead but also heard commentators say the lead wouldn't last, and went back to sleep. It wasn't until about 4 a.m. when a Secret Service member woke him up to tell him he was ahead by even more votes. The rest is history and a classic cautionary tale about election reporting.

There are some presidential sandwiches that people make famous. This one wouldn't have gotten any notice had it not been for a determined kid who was really good at storing food in a freezer. In September 1960, Nixon made a campaign stop in Illinois, where he was treated to a sandwich. One source says this was a Buffalo chicken sandwich, but others say it was barbecued buffalo meat; given that Buffalo chicken wasn't on the food scene until about 1963 or 1964, barbecued buffalo meat sounds more likely.

Anyway, Nixon ate half the sandwich and left, and that would have been that — except a Boy Scout named Steve Jenne, who was helping with the cookout, swiped up the rest of the sandwich and brought it home. His mom wrapped it up and placed it in the freezer where it stayed for years. Sixty years later, in 2020, he even wrote a book about the sandwich. He'd also taken the sandwich on "The Tonight Show" in 1988 and showed it to Johnny Carson after a local newspaper found out that he still had the sandwich half stored in his freezer.

During the 1992 campaign, then-Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton was at his home with a photographer, who captured a shot of him making a peanut butter and banana sandwich. It's a very normal scene, with Clinton in jeans and a sweatshirt, looking like he was ready to sit down with a snack and do a crossword puzzle. However, this photo showed up a lot. Combined with other appearances — such as the time he played the saxophone on "The Arsenio Hall Show" (a casual moment that would have been unheard-of behavior for previous candidates) — it likely helped make him seem more like a regular person than an unrelatable politician.

As it turned out, peanut butter and banana sandwiches actually are his favorite sandwich. After the election, manufacturers kept trying to figure out how to link their products to the things the president-elect liked. For example, a shortbread cookie company noted that Clinton often had a brand of shortbread available, and the cookie company hoped that this would help sales of shortbread, just as Ronald Reagan's love of Jelly Belly jelly beans sent sales of those sweets soaring. The manufacturer of Ziploc bags asked Clinton about his favorite sandwich, which he said was peanut butter and banana. It's interesting to note that a tuna company started distributing a recipe for what was supposedly Clinton's favorite tuna sandwich, although there's no information about whether Clinton actually said that was his favorite, too.

Technically, the sandwiches on this list are supposed to be specific ones that the president ate. George W. Bush no doubt ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at some point in his life; he even told Oprah Winfrey that peanut butter and jelly was his favorite. What makes the sandwich so memorable is not a specific one that he ate, though, but the fact that the sandwich was everywhere once he got into office. He reportedly had PB&J at Senate Republican lunches and had it added to the White House Mess menu (a small dining room run by Navy personnel), along with three types of jelly.

He didn't always eat PB&J at every occasion, of course. When then-President Obama asked the two Bushes, Bill Clinton, and Jimmy Carter to lunch, GWB had grilled cheese. Chefs recalled that he would often have BLTs, grilled cheese, burgers, or peanut butter and honey sandwiches for his regular daily lunches. PB&J is the only one that he told people was his favorite.

When a president or presidential candidate stops somewhere to get lunch, you can bet the press will be there. On top of that, you can bet that local and national news channels alike will have a report on just what the president ordered and who he spoke to. It's not surprising that there were news reports when then-president Barack Obama went to Zingerman's Deli in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and got a sandwich before heading to the University of Michigan to deliver a speech.

However, this stop was about more than just grabbing a quick bite to eat. The speech Obama was going to give was about raising the minimum wage, and his visit was the pinnacle of a series of meetings between the deli's co-founder and government officials. Zingerman's co-founder, Paul Saginaw, had already gone to Washington, D.C., to meet with the Secretary of Labor about raising the minimum wage, which Saginaw supported. Additional representatives from Michigan met with Saginaw at Zingerman's to further discuss wages, and the Obamas invited Saginaw to the speech at the university. It was after that invitation that Obama decided to eat lunch there, ordering a Reuben sandwich with a salad and pickle. The fact that this visit came on the heels of these meetings, and the large amount of publicity surrounding the visit, both make this Reuben more memorable than others.

We've been listing these sandwiches in chronological order according to administration. Donald Trump is the current president as of writing, but this next sandwich appeared during his first term. That sandwich — or sandwiches — were fast-food burgers. In 2019, Trump twice played host to champion college sports teams, treating them to lunch at the White House. Trump, whose love of fast food is well-known, paid for an enormous spread of fast-food burgers, salads, and other items from McDonald's, Chick-fil-A, Wendy's, Burger King, and more.

The first lunch was in January 2019, when the Clemson Tigers defeated the Alabama Crimson Tide. The government was in the middle of a shutdown, so having the White House kitchen make the meal wasn't possible due to furloughed staff. Trump paid for the fast food himself, and he looked delighted with the spread. Reaction from others outside the administration ranged from befuddled interest to accusations of classism and racism.

The second lunch was in March 2019 when the administration hosted the North Dakota State University football team. No shutdown was in effect at that point, but Trump presented another massive spread of fast food, claiming that he knew the players well (implying that they would want fast food).

A hoagie made the news after former President Joe Biden stopped at a Wawa convenience store in Philadelphia as part of a campaign tour through Pennsylvania. As you saw with President Obama's deli sandwiches, it's normal presidential lunch stops to turn into photo opportunities and news. What made this memorable was the additional reaction that came from the previous day. Before he got lunch at Wawa, he was in Pittsburgh and stopped at a Sheetz convenience store. His plan was to buy sandwiches and snacks for a construction crew. 

Conservatives ridiculed his visit and claimed that no one was excited to see him; some posted videos of both Biden's and Trump's campaign stops, showing little reaction to Biden but excited reactions to Trump. The stop was also the subject of a doctored video showing Biden's visit with someone yelling insults at him. An analysis from Reuters suggested that the clip came from a longer video that didn't have the same audio with the insults.

The Wawa visit was much calmer, but it did lead to some teasing from Senator John Fetterman, who jokingly wrote that Biden was no longer his president after seeing him visit a Wawa location — Fetterman prefers Sheetz.