Pursing Pork Tenderloin Sandwiches

by David Stovall

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 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 first building I had ever worked on as a student architectural intern in 1962. It was a Food Finds cable channel show titled Racing Around Indiana, featuring Indiana foods. The segment was on making the Indiana breaded pork tenderloin sandwich, in my hometown of Speedway, no less. It could’ve been a coincidence or an epiphany. Maybe it was both, because that TV show was the catalyst for reigniting my memories and spurring me to embark on a new, exciting journey.

With my wife, Nancy, by my side, I sought out, once again, those tenderloin sandwiches. Nancy doesn’t have the memories that reinforce my pursuit, but she puts up with my idiosyncrasies. Judging by the many tenderloins she orders, I suspect she doesn’t mind. She’s even more opinionated than I about the sandwiches. I just tend to enjoy eating them. If I had to choose a favorite, however, it would be from Nick’s Kitchen, a restaurant reputed to serve the first pork tenderloin sandwich.

The son of German immigrants, Nick Freienstein started selling schnitzels from a food cart in 1904. I imagine, for convenience, he served them as a handheld sandwich, and traditional wiener schnitzel (veal) was substituted with pork. He eventually opened his restaurant in 1908. It has been in business in the same place for a hundred and fifteen years, with several successive owners who kept the name and original recipe. The best lore coming from Nick’s Kitchen, if you want to believe it, is Nick’s older brother lost his fingers to frostbite and couldn’t hold a mallet, so he pounded the tenderloins flat with the stump of his hand.

We met Jean Anne Bailey, the current owner of Nick’s, and now a good friend. Jean Anne allowed us into the kitchen to fry our own sandwiches and then eat them in the dark by the front window for light when an electrical power outage closed the restaurant that morning. She sent her employees home and stayed herself, knowing we were coming. It may be my favorite because of the history of the restaurant, the friendship, and the magic of the moment.

I discovered Missouri had had a “Best Breaded Pork Tenderloin Sandwich” contest in 2008. The Udder End Cafe in Boonville was the winner. So Nancy and I meandered off the straight path to Texas to go to the Udder End. All we had was an address. The cafe itself didn’t even have a sign to mark it. What we didn’t know was it was in a cattle auction building, open only on Tuesdays, when auctions were held. Serendipitously, we showed up on a

Tuesday. Despite the cafe floor having cow droppings trampled in by cowboy boots, the tenderloin was worth it. It was one of the best I’ve had, as it was so tender it practically melted in my mouth. It could also have something to do, I suspect, with the quality of the pork, catering directly to farmers. I could see why it had been voted the best.

Facebook was a novelty at that time. I created a group: “Pursuing Pork Tenderloin Sandwiches,” for the purpose of finding those sandwiches in my travels, with the help of others. It’s how I heard about the Udder End Cafe. I envisioned a group of about two to three hundred members. There could not possibly be more fanatics than that.

Wrong!

I seem to have struck a nerve with others. As of this article, there are over 75,000 members. The group has evolved into finding the best tenderloin sandwich, through not just suggestions, but reviews and photos. One of my challenges, since a lot of the members’ common lament is not knowing where to find them in their state, is to find them outside the Midwest. My search, from Talkeetna, Alaska to Mission, Texas, and Palm Springs, California to Hagerstown, Maryland, has totaled close to 300 restaurants in 31 states in 17 years of travels, which is one about every 3 weeks.

I continue to travel the country, feasting on all the pork tenderloin sandwiches I can find, while connecting with countless people in person and online along the way, who share this delicious passion.