Interesting. I’ve never seen it as such around here, but now I bet if I find myself in a diner in the middle of Illinois, that’s the first thing I’ll notice.
I’ve never had either of the dishes in the OP, and I can’t really see how one would be that much different than the other but, given the two, I suspect I’d like the hot beef over the hot hamburger, although the hot beef I suspect is easier to screw up.
Hot beef…yummm!
Yup… it is definitely “diner food.” You’ll find it the kind of places that serve chicken and noodles (maybe even over mashed potatoes). I never had one until I was in my mid 20’s and was taken to a hole in the wall, and that is what everyone there was eating… mostly farmers and construction crew type people. My work cafeteria even serves them maybe once a month and they are very popular.
I’m curious where the OP is from, because that is the exact same thing as a Beef Manhattan… roast beef between two pieces of white bread, cut on the diagonal, pile of mashed potatoes in the middle and brown gravy over all of it… but that (hot beef) isn’t the common name for it in this area at least.
Someone mentioned they would make it on a roll with the gravy on the side… that would be sent right back to the kitchen by someone ordering a Beef Manhattan.
Never heard of them. Based on the pictures linked, I’d go with the hot beef.
Yeah, I’ve only seen the open faced hot beef sandwich variety in the diners in my neck of the woods (Chicago.) It’s just called a gravy sandwich or somesuch around here, although I’m not sure if there is any consistency to the naming. I just looked at a local diner’s “gravy sandwiches” and it lists both hot beef and hot hamburger in that category, although they are both open-faced, not like in the OP.
Hot Beef.
Soggy bread drowned in gravy? Blech.
Neither one for me.
Leave the gravy off (completely!!), and it’s a toss-up - I’d take either one.
Actually, the correct answer to this is torta ahogada.
I’m from South Dakota and both the hot beef and hot hamburger were ubiquitous in just about every little cafe and truck stop around when I was a kid. The hot hamburger picture isn’t a very good representation as the hot beef and hot hamburger were both whole sandwiches with mashed potatoes and gravy on top. Haven’t seen them in years though. Never heard of a Beef Manhattan.
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking too.
If you gave me the choice between a chopped beef sandwich (Texas style chopped beef brisket) or a good hamburger, I’d be at a loss to choose.
But confronted with that mess in your pictures, I’d take the chicken.
I can’t answer this poll, because I love them both. I don’t want all one, or all the other. Mix it up. Hell, give me one of each.
Just because you can’t decide, that’s no reason to try and kill yourself! :eek:
Aw, so you’re Kimballman (or -woman) now? I had you pictured as the (intelligent and relatively world-savvy) kid of a Doper.
I grew up with a similar open faced turkey sandwich as part of our family menu. The bread was always toasted and we weren’t allowed to let our sandwich swim in the gravy like that. There were other people who needed gravy for their dinner too. 
Toasting the bread really saved it from going gooey the way store bought white bread can do. It’s infinitely better with my mom’s homemade bread but that kind of goes without saying.
I’ve made open faced beef sandwiches with gravy before as an adult with dinner leftovers, but had no idea it had a real name. I definitely prefer the beef roast slices to hamburger. It just seems to go with gravy more in my head.
A local man started calling me that when I moved to the town I currently live in because he was related to (?, I can’t remember) someone from my home town of Kimball. He was a really nice man, but he died a couple of years ago.
I haven’t lived there since I was a kid actually, but once a Kimball kid, always a Kimball kid. 
Wow, those look seriously gross. Every time I think I’ve exhausted the strange and terrifying world of Midwestern food, something new comes along.
Really? A hot sandwich with gravy poured over it is gross? That looks no grosser than biscuits and gravy (which to me look like someone took a water-chunky shit over a fine plate of biscuits. Love 'em, but they look seriously unappetizing.)
But, a little more seriously, in the world of gravy drenched sandwiches, you must try a torta ahogada. It may be the greatest sandwich ever created.
They’re really common here (I’m in Minnesota). I’ve mostly seen them at locally owned cafes. I always called them beef commercials, though, and I’ve never seen them made with hamburger. They’re good with turkey, too.
The Hot Beef Sandwich is the quintessential greasy-spoon diner food. It’s the one dish I use to gauge a diner’s relative quality.
A Hot Hamburger? That’s… That’s just… Wha???