Pursing Pork Tenderloin Sandwiches by David Stovall
Bill Hoff
For the uninitiated, pork tenderloin
sandwiches are essentially schnitzel sandwiches, made from pork loin that has been pounded flat, breaded and fried. Schnitzels are an old Austrian/German food, more of a plate for dinner than a sandwich. They can be the size of that dinner plate or, some say, a hubcap. Imagine one of those on a small hamburger bun. People try them mostly out of curiosity. In Indiana, Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri, they are as much a staple in restaurants as hamburgers. They go by many names and, in Texas, I had to ask a cook what a pork burger was. He said, “It is like a chicken fried steak, but pork, without the gristle.” I call them the Midwest term: pork tenderloins. I often get asked where my obsession for this particular food came from. I attribute it to my youth. When I got my driver’s license at the very end of the 50’s, “wheels” meant freedom for a teenage boy, and cruisin’ is what I did, mostly between drive-ins, to see what was happenin’. They all had tenderloins, ones that generally fit the hamburger buns. So, the first
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thing I did when I had the freedom to make my own choices was drive clear across Indianapolis, to the legendary Al Green’s Drive-in Restaurant, reputed for their huge tenderloins several inches overhanging the bun. After that day, tenderloins became forever entwined with that feeling of youthful freedom. I now live in Minnesota, which has a decent amount of German ancestry, is the number two hog producing state bordering Iowa, but is strangely bereft of tenderloins. For forty plus years, I became busy with college, marriage, the Navy, raising a family, and having an architectural career. My boyhood memories of tenderloins had fallen into the crevices of my mind. Until several years later, that is. I was staying home from work with the flu and had a rare day of watching daytime TV. While flipping quickly through the cable channels, I saw a familiar building on the TV screen. I probably went a few clicks past before it dawned on me. It was the Brickyard Crossing at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the
