My Other Passion: Pork Tenderloin

“Tenderloins are just part of life” says Steve Jones, an Indiana Food Historian and tenderloin enthusiast. Where I come from, breaded pork tenderloins, or Breaded Pork-Ts for those “in the know,” are a staple of genteel living, and as close to ambrosia as you’ll get in a state that prides itself on damning people to fire and brimstone.

Elusive and unknown to most non-Hoosiers, the breaded pork tenderloin hails from Huntington IN, the same city as the great potatoe-loving Dan Quayle.

Founded in 1908 by Nick Freienstein, the original recipe includes a long soak in buttermilk before the cutlets are dredged in crushed cracker crumbs. The founding restaurant still stands today, where most everything on the menu is breaded, just to pay homage.

Snack-size breaded pork tenderloin.

Some (actually, only me) say that the BPT should be named our national sandwich. Few sandwiches have the stature and clout of the BPT, which is listed on the official Indiana government webpage, and even has it’s own Facebook page. Supporting my point more, critically acclaimed (34 likes on youtube!) documentaries have archived the brave pilgrimage of the BPT from its humble beginnings with a piglet martyr to its final resting place in a beholden potbelly.

Dave Clapp, of Mr. Dave’s Restaurant, maintains that “people traveling through Indiana owe it to themselves to try a breaded pork tenderloin” as they can’t be found “on the east coast, west coast, or Florida. Or even Texas!”

“It’s just too bad that people that don’t live around here that have experienced a tenderloin and then move away where you can not get them, I have people call here and just crave for a breaded tenderloin” remarks Dave’s son, Kevin Clapp.

However, like most of life’s euphoric experiences, Pork Ts also have a seedy underbelly. Much like methamphetamine, another one of Indiana’s delicacies, “If it’s a good tenderloin, you’ll never forget it. You’ll want another one and then eventually you’ll become addicted,” states Dave Clapp. However, unlike meth, BPTs are considered a designer, high-class drug, with local dealer, Morris May, noting “if you look in my parking lot you see a bunch of senior citizens, not a bunch of punk kids that don’t have no money.”

Local dealer “cutting” the tenderloin for distribution.

Regardless of the harrowing after-effects, “tenderloins are just part of life” and a life without BPTs is not a life worth living.

Me on my hajj to mecca.