Indiana Alumni Magazine
Hoosier Diner
Tastebuds of Indiana favor pork to fair foods, but new, varied flavors are finding ways onto menus
By Jennifer Piurek
It’s Friday night at the Gnaw Bone Food & Fuel, and the joint is jumpin’. The mostly senior-citizen crowd taps their toes to bluegrass tunes, shoulder-to-shoulder at long, cafeteria-style tables. Against the back wall are novelty items including plaques emblazoned with an array of “beware of” slogans: “Beware of the Attack Golfer.” “Beware of the Attack Jackass.” From the corner of the room, someone belts out a well-timed “Yee-Haw!” to appreciative hoots of laughter. When Food & Fuel owner Beni Clevenger makes the mistake of walking too near the stage, he gets recruited to sing backup. “While the boy’s up here, we’re gonna have him help us out,” says the lead singer. “He cooks good tenderloin — and he sings, too!”
Ahhh, good tenderloin. What could be more Hoosier than that?
The Food & Fuel in Gnaw Bone, Ind. — which has been profiled by Gourmet magazine and NBC’s “Today” show — is famous for its take on the state’s claim to culinary fame, the pork tenderloin sandwich. “We get customers from Florida, Alabama, Michigan, Wisconsin, everywhere,” says Clevenger.
It’s not surprising that people come from so far away for the famous pork sandwiches. Outside state borders, the tenderloin is practically nonexistent.
“A lot of people are stunned to leave continental Indiana and realize they can’t find tenderloin anywhere, except maybe Iowa or Illinois,” says Indianapolis-based journalist and food critic Reid Duffy. Duffy has worked as a restaurant reviewer for WRTV and WNDY in Indianapolis and written books, including Indianapolis Dining and Indiana’s Favorite Restaurants, in which he profiled 30 longstanding restaurants, from the Tippecanoe Place in South Bend to Janko’s Little Zagreb in Bloomington.
Beyond tenderloin, though, is there such a thing as “Hoosier food”? There are as many takes on the meaning of Hoosier food as there are definitions for the word Hoosier itself. Hoosier food enthusiasts list fried chicken, mashed potatoes, popcorn, and biscuits and gravy among what they consider Indiana’s favorites. To Duffy, Hoosier food is the pure, simple food that comes off the farm: fried chicken, beef, pork tenderloin, corn, vegetables, and pies. Then there’s world-famous chef, Wolfgang Puck, once a chef at La Tour in Indianapolis, who has no such list. “There is no ‘Hoosier cuisine,’” he says.
Photo by Bob Stefko Photography.
Indiana’s trademark foods vary slightly from region to region, north to south. Throughout the early to mid-19th century, most of Indiana’s settlers were from the North Carolina Piedmont and the Upland South, which included Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee. Northern Indiana’s early settlers came from New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Germany.
Duffy says Northern Indiana is heavy on “big hunks of meat” and lamb, and reflects a European influence. “Fort Wayne, Gary, and South Bend had better restaurants than Indianapolis for a while,” he says. “There was more variety.”
Southern Indiana is where native persimmons and sweet potatoes morph into luscious pies, ham is hickory-smoked and basted with honey, and giant fresh cantaloupes and ears of corn explode from roadside vendors and farmers’ markets all summer long. Many of Southern Indiana’s original settlers were German or of English and Scottish-Irish descent. Many were farmers who raised livestock and brought with them their agricultural practices, such as cultivating corn and raising hogs.
“Hardly anything is ever wasted,” writes Glenn Andrews of Midwestern eating habits in her book Food from the Heartland: The Cooking of America’s Midwest, a cookbook that lists recipes for Danish and Polish salads alongside Wilted Lettuce Salad, a Midwestern favorite (the lettuce wilts when hit with hot bacon dressing). “Leftover mashed potatoes become mashed potato patties and even chocolate cakes. Miscellaneous bits and pieces of vegetables go into soups and stews. Leftover chicken turns up with noodles or in casseroles and salads. Leftover meats become crisp hashes or creamy salads. The fat that cooks off so many things (sausage, bacon, goose, duck, whatever) turns up frying the morning’s ham or the dinner’s potatoes,” Andrews writes. “I can’t manage to get to the Midwest very often these days, but simply by cooking its wonderful dishes, I can get the feeling I crave of coming home.”
The food at Joe’s Pizza in Bloomfield, Ind., is not for sissies. Visitors who order the tenderloin get a sandwich that would have Fred Flintstone begging for a doggie bag halfway through. Owner Joe Karl, who runs the place with his wife, Vanessa Karl, and manager, Linda Hellerman, says it’s rare for someone to finish a whole sandwich in one sitting. Some people make a habit of eating their way around the bun and taking the rest home.
The walls are plastered with NASCAR and other sports paraphernalia, including an autograph from former Yankees baseball player and Evansville native Don Mattingly, who ate here when he was in town. A sign in the bathroom dares anyone willing to try to win a free steak dinner by eating a 66-ounce steak with salad, baked potato, and drink in 30 minutes. “No one’s done it yet,” chuckles Karl. “I’m thinking about upping it to an hour.”
When Karl bought this place 10 years ago — coincidentally, from someone named Joe, allowing him to preserve the original name — he almost immediately added tenderloin to the menu. “I’ve always loved ’em, since I was a kid,” says Karl. “This is good food, not fast food. We make one tenderloin at a time, cooked to order. Each sandwich is about a quarter-pound, but each one is different. Like snowflakes,” he says.
What’s Hoosier food to Joe Karl? Tenderloin, stromboli, corn on the cob, sugar cream pie. “I’ve sent these all over the U.S.,” says Karl, gesturing to the colossal sandwich in front of him. “I had some people come in from South Carolina. They had me make eight sandwiches and wrap them in foil so they could eat ’em all the way back home.”
Darell Sayer, BA’74, is an attorney in Virginia now, but the Vincennes, Ind., native is food-wise, and his tastebuds are pure Hoosier. Sayer scoffed at the hoopla surrounding former IU Athletics Director Michael McNeely’s quest for a Hoosier mascot. Didn’t these people realize the perfect mascot was staring up at them from the plate? Didn’t they understand the new mascot should be … the pork tenderloin sandwich?
“If we had a mascot, it should be something entirely different than a fighting Spartan or angry badger,” he says. “The tenderloin epitomizes all that’s good about Indiana.” In a letter to a friend in Bloomington, Sayer wrote, “I have enclosed an article about the San Antonio Missions’ mascot, ‘Henry the Puffy Taco.’ As you can see, I’m not the only person who sees the value of a carbohydrate-laden mascot. My God, when will the powers-that-be wake up and smell the grease??? We must have a tenderloin mascot, and the time is now!!!”
A few days later, Sayer sent another missive, this one about a minor league baseball team in Alabama, the Montgomery Biscuits. The Biscuits had chosen an edible mascot — a cartoonish looking biscuit named Monty, with a pat of butter for a tongue — further fueling Sayer’s belief in what he calls the “Wisdom of the ’Loin.”
“Have you ever been to Montgomery?” he wrote. “I have. Do you think Southern Indiana is conservative? This joint makes Martinsville look like Berkeley. AND YET … they see the wisdom of the biscuit. The quest continues.”
So how does this tenderloin fanatic manage to survive in a place utterly devoid of his beloved fried pork sandwiches? For one, his wife made him give up fried foods awhile ago. But he’ll always have his memories. Growing up in Vincennes, Sayer’s hangout of choice was Smitty’s pool hall on Main Street. “There were pool tables upstairs, and downstairs, old men played poker at big tables. They had big brass spittoons and a sign that said ‘Do not spit on the floor.’ Their tenderloins were 65 cents when I was in high school.”
When Sayer visits family and friends in Indiana, the diet is off. His favorite tenderloin places are the Gnaw Bone Food & Fuel and Barringers Tavern in Indianapolis. So what’s Hoosier food to Darell Sayer? He lists popcorn, biscuits and gravy, melons, cantaloupe, and “fair foods” such as elephant ears and funnel cakes. “My good friend is a heart surgeon,” he says. “He claims funnel cakes are the worst thing in the world to eat for your heart.”
In Virginia, “good Mexican” is his food splurge of choice. But back home in Indiana, “I would go on a pork festival. Biscuits and gravy in the morning, tenderloin at lunch, and something else sinful at night.”
Food critic Reid Duffy: “Hoosier food is the pure, simple food that comes off the farm: fried chicken, beef, pork tenderloin, corn, vegetables, and pies.” Photo by Duncan Alney.
When it comes to comparing Midwestern eating habits with those of the rest of the country, Reid Duffy says born and bred Midwesterners often gravitate toward cafeteria-style restaurants, buffets, and country cooking, such as fried chicken and biscuits and gravy. Because it takes longer for trends to take hold in the Midwest than other parts of the country, Duffy says, new chain restaurants often use Indiana as a test market. “Both coasts are more inclined to go with new trends in cooking — they come later to the Midwest.”
While Duffy notes that cafeteria-style restaurants are experiencing a slight decline in popularity, many buffet or country-style restaurants are in it for the long haul, including the Kopper Kettle in Morristown, and the Iron Skillet and Hollyhock Hill, both in Indianapolis.
“It’s not that we can’t tell good food from bad. Indiana cafeterias are simply different — and superior to — what most people grew up with. They aren’t innocuous, impersonal corporate chains or plebian, bottom-of-the-barrel feeding troughs. They’re culinary landmarks,” writes Sam Stall in Tray Chic: Celebrating Indiana’s Cafeteria Culture. “Hoosier cafeterias aren’t lands that time forgot. They are citadels where time stands still.”
World-famous Austria-born chef Wolfgang Puck, who lived in Indianapolis in the early ’70s, has positive associations with his two years in the Midwest. Although he experienced several “firsts” in Indiana — first Thanksgiving, first outdoor barbecue, first corn on the cob — Puck doesn’t believe Hoosiers have a distinctive style of eating. “There is no ‘Hoosier cuisine,’” he says. “Indiana is not known for a style of food.”
Puck moved to Indiana in 1974 after spending some time in New York and Chicago, when a friend suggested he become the chef at La Tour, a classic French restaurant in downtown Indianapolis. “I got all excited because of the outdoor car racing. I had lived in Monte Carlo, so that is what I pictured. I arrived there, and oh my God. It was November in Indiana.”
Times have changed. While the Hoosier palate will always have room for farm favorites, there’s plenty of room for new flavors. In May, Puck returned to Indianapolis to open Puck’s, a restaurant in the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Executive chef Brad Gates, a Fort Wayne native who helped develop the menu for Britney Spears’s now-defunct Nyla Restaurant, is using all of the local ingredients he can find, as well as growing an on-site vegetable garden that children visiting the museum will be encouraged to observe.
Puck says his former La Tour customers have been urging him to open a restaurant in Indiana for years. “Customers always say ‘Why don’t you come back?’ And the chance came along. The whole city has changed so much,” Puck says, citing the range of ethnic restaurants and increased cultural opportunities. “People said, ‘Keep it simple, it’s Indianapolis.’” But Puck felt strongly that the people of Indiana didn’t need another steak house, or a Puck-ified version of biscuits and gravy. He remained firm that the Indiana palate would be open to the Asian fusion and gourmet pizzas that have become his trademark. “I said, ‘We’ll have a restaurant that reflects what we do [worldwide].’ We use local ingredients, but prepare them to our style.”
Duffy agrees that while classic Hoosier favorites aren’t going anywhere, the people of Indiana are more experimental with their dining choices than ever before. “I started reviewing restaurants in the late ’70s,” Duffy says. “There were three Mexican places, no Indian, no Korean, no Japanese, no Thai restaurants that I can recall. Ethnic was Chinese and Italian.” Modern times have ushered in an acceptance of ethnic cuisines to match an ever diversified population. “There’s a bean factory in Indiana that made bean soup for soldiers returning from the war 50 years ago. Their business has gone up recently because of the Hispanic population, especially refried beans,” Duffy says.
During a meal at Hollyhock Hill in Indianapolis, it’s unusual to sit through an entire dinner without hearing a chorus or two of “Happy Birthday.” Hollyhock is a special-event place where families and friends gather to commemorate birthdays, anniversaries, rehearsal dinners, and to share holiday meals when no one has the time or the energy to cook at home. The kindly waitresses wear old-fashioned, Alice in Wonderland-style dresses with aprons, and the atmosphere is one of casual elegance — fine without being fussy. There’s no menu. Everyone eats the same thing: fried chicken. The meal starts with a glass of tomato juice, and then the plates of food start coming out. There are soft, sweet dinner rolls, iceberg lettuce salads, boats of radishes, carrots, and celery, bowls of beets, cottage cheese, green beans, corn, and creamy mashed potatoes, and, of course, the fried chicken (beef and fish are also available). After the dinner plates are cleared away, vanilla ice cream is served with a choice of caramel, chocolate, or mint topping. On special occasions, a plate of brownies comes out, too.
Restaurants like these have long catered to the big family celebrations, Duffy says. “In rural areas, more people go out for family gatherings than ever before. Places that can accommodate large groups, generally over family-style fried chicken and steak, aren’t going anywhere,” he says, citing Joe Huber’s Family Restaurant in Starlight, Ind., a pick-your-own produce farm with a restaurant on-site.
“What’s happening now is a trend of agritourism,” says Duffy. “People are going to the farm and buying directly off the land.” Agritourism is the perfect way for urbanites to connect with the land by touring a farm, milking a cow, or picking their own produce. People get to meet the person who’s growing or raising their food, and farms can attract tourist dollars that spill out to neighboring areas of town. The state of Indiana’s Web site now features a list of many of the state’s U-pick farms, farmers’ markets, and agritourism attractions, complete with maps and information about each.
“We’re also getting a trend of a lot of gourmet restaurants buying locally produced food straight from the farm and making a big deal of letting customers know they use cheese from Capriole farms, or letting people know where they get their chickens,” says Duffy.
If everything seems bigger in Indiana — corn, portion sizes, people —Midwestern holidays are huge, a chance for families to reconnect over steaming plates of home-cooked specialties. Indiana Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations feature all the universal favorites: roasted turkey, ham, stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, pumpkin pie, and sweet potatoes, along with regional favorites like turkey and noodles and persimmon pie.
Courtesy photo.
Native Hoosier Michael Pipher recalls the “Norman Rockwell” Thanksgivings of his youth. “My folks and the five of us kids would travel to join my aunt, uncle, and cousins at grandma and grandpa’s house. Grandma would’ve been up since before dawn basting a turkey so large it barely fit in the oven. Oh, the food! Platters, plates, and bowls filled the dining room table and spilled over to cover the china buffet and a nearby desk. We ate until it hurt, and then we started in on the desserts.”
Louise Miracle, MS’90, PhD’91, designed her kitchen in Gosport, Ind., around an old-fashioned wood-cook stove, the kind Indiana settlers used in the late 1800s. “When you cook something on a standard stove, it’s basically you doing it. But this, it’s you and the stove working together, a partnership.” Her favorite time to use the wood-cook stove is around the holidays. At Thanksgiving, her son visits with his wife and children, along with other family members and friends, and Miracle starts cooking at the crack of dawn: Pumpkin soup, rutabaga (“even though no one ever eats it”), stuffed turkey. She fixes at least three desserts, including cake and pumpkin and pecan pies.
More than the delicious holiday food that’s produced, Miracle loves the feeling of warmth in the house, the anticipation that builds when food is slowly cooked all day. “You start in the morning, and as you start building a fire, you think about the people who are coming. The stove becomes part of that anticipation, and the idea of having good food where people can open up lids and peek and stir and taste — just the idea of the old-fashioned part where it’s going to take all day to cook it. We go for a walk when it’s cooking along. I think there’s something kind of quintessentially family oriented when you smell everything, you smell the fire. To me it brings together a lot of different senses.”
Back at the Food & Fuel, Beni Clevenger is saying goodbye to customers as they exit into the oven-like outdoors to enjoy the rest of their Fourth of July weekend. A towering, well-fed man in overalls enters and saunters up to Clevenger with an easy grin. “Any chow left?” he asks. “Not really,” shrugs Clevenger, who closed the grill half an hour ago. “That’s all right, I’m too fat anyway,” says the man, chuckling and patting his belly. The conversation turns back to the state’s favorite food. “Once a Hoosier, always a Hoosier,” Clevenger says. “When people move away, they always come back to get tenderloin.” 
Jennifer Piurek, MA’01, is a freelance writer in Bloomington.
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Books: Food from the Heartland: The Cooking of America’s Midwest by Glenn Andrews (Simon & Schuster, 1991) Tray Chic: Celebrating Indiana’s Cafeteria Culture by Sam Stall (Emmis Books, 2004) Restaurants: Gnaw Bone Food & Fuel: 4947 S.R. 46, Gnaw Bone, Ind., (812) 988-4575 Joe’s Pizza: 160 W. Mill St., Bloomfield, Ind., (812) 384-3115 Hollyhock Hill: 8110 N. College Avenue, Indianapolis, (317) 251-2294, www.hollyhockhill.com Barringers Tavern: 2535 S. Meridian St., Indianapolis, (317) 783-3663 |
Puck’s: 4000 Michigan Road, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, (317) 955-2315 Joe Huber’s Family Farm & Restaurant: 2421 Scottsville Road, Starlight, Ind., (toll free) 877-Joe-Hubers, www.joehubers.com Kopper Kettle: U.S. Highway 52, Morristown, Ind., (765) 763-6767, www.kopperkettle.com Iron Skillet: 2489 West 30th St., Indianapolis, (317) 923-6353 Online: For a link from the state of Indiana’s Web site to listings of U-pick farms, farmers’ markets, and agritourism attractions, see: www.in.gov/isda/market/index.html. |