My Meals are on Wheels

One of America’s Favorites – Fool’s Gold Loaf

Fool’s Gold Loaf is a sandwich made by the Colorado Mine Company, a restaurant in Denver, Colorado. The sandwich consists of a single warmed, hollowed-out loaf of bread filled with the contents of one jar of creamy peanut butter, one jar of grape jelly, and a pound of bacon. The sandwich’s connection to Elvis Presley is the source of its legend and prolonged interest. According to The Life and Cuisine of Elvis Presley, it was the focus of a midnight sandwich run by Elvis Presley and his friends. Taking his private jet from Graceland, Presley and his friends purchased 22 of the sandwiches and spent two hours eating them and drinking Perrier and champagne before flying home. The story became legend and the sandwich became the subject of continued media interest and part of numerous cookbooks, typically focused around Presley’s love of food.

There are two accounts on the origin of Fool’s Gold Loaf. According to Graeme Wood, the Fool’s Gold Loaf was created by Cindy and Buck Scott, owners of the Colorado Mine Company restaurant. Wood writes that Elvis obtained the recipe from the Scotts, so his personal chef could make it, but noted that “the Fool’s Gold Loaf never made a recorded encore”.

According to Nick Andurlakis, he helped create the sandwich while he was working at the Colorado Mine Company as a chef and suggested the Fool’s Gold Loaf to Elvis. Andurlakis claims that he personally delivered the sandwiches to Elvis on the famous night.

The sandwich was named to fit the mining motif of the restaurant. At the time of Elvis’s famous outing, the Fool’s Gold Loaf cost $49.95 (equivalent to $215 in 2017).

The recipe has been repeated by numerous sources, including The Life and Cuisine of Elvis Presley and Andurlakis, a chef at the Colorado Mine Company.

The Fool’s Gold Loaf begins with a loaf of French white bread that is covered in two tablespoons of margarine and baked in the oven at 350F/180C until brown. One pound of sliced bacon is fried in oil until crispy and drained. The loaf is sliced lengthwise, hollowed out, and filled with peanut butter, grape jelly and bacon.

According to Andurlakis, he personally served Elvis the Fool’s Gold Loaf with bacon, peanut butter, and blueberry preserves on a loaf of French bread. The specific type of preserves was allegedly Dickinson’s blueberry preserves.

David Adler’s book contains a detailed account of the event that made the Fool’s Gold Loaf sandwich famous. On the night of February 1, 1976, Elvis Presley was at his home at Graceland in Memphis, entertaining Capt. Jerry Kennedy of the Denver, Colorado police force, and Ron Pietrafeso of Colorado’s Strike Force Against Crime. The three men began discussing the sandwich, and Presley decided he wanted one right then. Presley had been to the restaurant before, while in Denver. Kennedy and Pietrafeso were friends of the owners and hung out there often, so they were driven to the Memphis airport and boarded Presley’s private jet, the Lisa Marie, and flew the two hours to Denver. When they arrived at Stapleton International Airport at 1:40 AM, the plane taxied to a special hangar where the passengers were greeted by Buck Scott, the owner of the Colorado Mine Company, and his wife Cindy who had brought 22 fresh Fool’s Gold Loaves for the men. They spent two hours in the hangar eating the sandwiches, washing them down with Perrier and champagne. Presley invited the pilots of the plane, Milo High and Elwood Davis, to join them. When they were done, they flew back to Memphis without ever having left the Denver airport.